The future is fewer people writing code? • Hacker News Board

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#81

Post by imgabe » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #41

pmlnr wrote: post #6

“50 years from now, I can’t imagine people programming as we do today. It just can’t be." Dear writer, let me introduce you to FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, or BASIC. These are alive languages, all 50+ years old. Coding didn't change much. The languages, the methodologies, the ideas change, but the approach is the same, and whoever thinks this will soon (50 years is not _that_ far) changes, have never had to debug something…

There's a serious gap in the writer's mind about computation and programming. It's like the author is suggesting that "eventually we won't need writing: it will be replace by writing-thinking or picture-writing". It's completely absurd. Specific, complex ideas can only be described and communicated in text. Not pictures. Blueprints, for example, have a pictorial element to them, but their fundamental value is our abi…

Blueprints/schematics are far, far superior at conveying the information they do compared to a written narrative. Given the ease of preparing written text compared to drawing schematics nobody would go to the trouble of doing so if that weren't the case.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#82

Post by Kinnard » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

xigency wrote: post #66

Kinnard wrote: post #12

> For instance, to turn a button red, we shouldn’t have to write code. We should just be able to point to the button and select a shade of red. Someone is going to have to right the code so that the end-user can just click buttons. So if this future of programmatic interfaces is coming, it's going to require more people writing code to build it— not fewer!

Just point to the button and select a shade of being able to point at the button and click a color. (Yes, that is confusing.) I don't think the author or the person interviewed has used Visual Basic, or understands why a developer might not want that.

Essentially what he's saying is that in the future people will just read and not write . . .

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#83

Post by leggomylibro » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

tribune wrote: post #10

"...so why are we having a serious conversation about grooming children to become software developers before they’ve even gone to middle school?" We're not, really, but given the pervasiveness of computing technology we're recognizing that it's important for children to have some formal experience with software design concepts regardless of which career path they choose. I'm a firm believer that at least some coding…

Exactly - teaching people how to use software to solve problems at an early age is not railroading them into a single career path, it's setting them up to be more effective in the career path that they eventually choose.

An administrative assistant who can write scripts to collate and email weekly reports to their boss is far more valuable than one who spends four hours a week combing through excel spreadsheets.

A visual artist who can write their own plugins for Blender/Maya/Photoshop/etc will be much more flexible and productive than one who performs the same 2-minute-long string of commands hundreds of times a day.

A machinist who can quickly design a part in Solidworks and send it to a CNC mill or lathe will be able to serve a wider range of customer needs than one who outsources that design work or crafts the part by hand.

And so on. Why is there so much hostility to the idea of teaching children some basic programming skills at an early age?

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#84

Post by ewzimm » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #65

ewzimm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years don't make progress on their own, people working during those years push progress forward. The estimated population of ancient Babylon at its height was 200,000. Let's imagine that 1% of them were working on developing writing for at leat 2 hours every week and that those who came after them were able to maintain that level of work for 1000 years until ancient Greece, over 200 million hours of work. That's less…

As long as we're criticizing the analogies in the discussion (rather than the actual arguments) I'd say the hours spent do not have a consistent quality vis-a-vis solving hard problems. Because there are more absolute hours available does not mean that there are more hours available for solving hard AI problems. There are very likely less. And there has been virtually NO progress on the hard AI front.

Hard, human-level AI would help this a lot, but it isn't necessary. All that's required for traditional programming to become obsolete is for computers to be much better at understanding ambiguity and have a robust model for the flow of programs. With today's neural networks and technology, I have no doubt it would be possible to design something that would create good code based on all the samples on github. Not easy by any means or someone would have done it, but it doesn't require any breakthroughs of computer science, just lots of data and good design. The tools referenced in the articles are working primitive versions of this.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#85

Post by ewzimm » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #65

ewzimm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years don't make progress on their own, people working during those years push progress forward. The estimated population of ancient Babylon at its height was 200,000. Let's imagine that 1% of them were working on developing writing for at leat 2 hours every week and that those who came after them were able to maintain that level of work for 1000 years until ancient Greece, over 200 million hours of work. That's less…

As long as we're criticizing the analogies in the discussion (rather than the actual arguments) I'd say the hours spent do not have a consistent quality vis-a-vis solving hard problems. Because there are more absolute hours available does not mean that there are more hours available for solving hard AI problems. There are very likely less. And there has been virtually NO progress on the hard AI front.

Hard, human-level AI would help this a lot, but it isn't necessary. All that's required for traditional programming to become obsolete is for computers to be much better at understanding ambiguity and have a robust model for the flow of programs. With today's neural networks and technology, I have no doubt it would be possible to design something that would create good code based on all the samples on github. Not easy by any means or someone would have done it, but it doesn't require any breakthroughs of computer science, just lots of data and good design. The tools referenced in the articles are working primitive versions of this.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#86

Post by _fwia » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #37

Are there graphical languages that advocates like? The only graphical language that I've encountered professionally is LabVIEW, and I've yet to see an instance/programming style where it has been superior for anything but quick prototyping. A language that's editable in both flowchart and traditional formats could be very useful, if executed in a way that doesn't cripple the traditional side of things.

LabVIEW was eerily satisfying to write code in. Or at least some type of code in. Loops and logic blocks got a tiny bit weird, but overall you could do a lot with sub-vis.

I find myself craving it even 15 years later.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#87

Post by seangrogg » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #36

throwaway2016a wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but web developers still tend to do it the "hard way" but editing the CSS directly. Why do web developers still do it that way even though visual tools exist? My guess is because with working with text is more efficient. The cognitive load of finding a setting in the UI, moving your mouse to it, and selecting the value is far greater than just typing.

Why do people play D&D instead of WoW? Perhaps, in part, because one allows for a greater expressiveness -- albeit with a little more planning and cognitive load.

This does make me wonder if developers tend to be involved in more forms of creative expression (roleplaying, art, etc.) than in creative consumption (gaming, movies, etc.), what intersection(s) exist and why...

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#88

Post by krapht » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

winstonewert wrote: post #63

n00b101 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diagrams suck And yet anytime two or more programmers get together to talk about what they are creating, they start drawing diagrams on whiteboards.

And it is on a whiteboard because it is not useful enough to record in a longer term medium. I'm not saying diagrams are useless, they just make a poor substitute for syntax.

I'm going to disagree on that. Every day I wish I could intermix textual and pictorial representations of logic in the programming I do. In particular, any series of computations that can be represented as a directed graph, e.g. a streaming data workflow, or state machine, is much more easily understood pictorially than textually.

The flowchart and decision tree exist for a reason to describe algorithms.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#89

Post by seangrogg » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

"[...] so why are we having a serious conversation about grooming children to become software developers before they’ve even gone to middle school?"

For the same reason we groom children to become mathematicians, scientists, readers, writers, historians, musicians, actors, etc. before middle school. Project Bloks grooms your child to be a Software Developer about as much as their first grade teacher grooms them to be a Quantitative Analyst.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#90

Post by foota » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #84

nickbauman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're criticizing the analogies in the discussion (rather than the actual arguments) I'd say the hours spent do not have a consistent quality vis-a-vis solving hard problems. Because there are more absolute hours available does not mean that there are more hours available for solving hard AI problems. There are very likely less. And there has been virtually NO progress on the hard AI front.

Hard, human-level AI would help this a lot, but it isn't necessary. All that's required for traditional programming to become obsolete is for computers to be much better at understanding ambiguity and have a robust model for the flow of programs. With today's neural networks and technology, I have no doubt it would be possible to design something that would create good code based on all the samples on github. Not eas…

There's an important distinction though between being able to write a compiling (or even functional) program and being able to write a program that serves a particular purpose.