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The future is fewer people writing code?

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Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#191

Post by modeless »

He's right but he doesn't understand why. We'll write less code in the future but it won't have anything to do with visual programming languages or other fancy tools for "programming without code". Code will always be the best way to write programs.

The reason we'll write less code in the future is we won't need as many programs. The future is in machine learning and machine teaching, which enable a single program to perform a huge variety of different tasks. We'll train the computers of the future by showing examples and correcting mistakes, as we do with our fellow humans. Machine teaching is a different thing entirely from programming.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#192

Post by ewzimm »

jimbokun wrote: post #185
ewzimm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about human-guided programming without using traditional programming language, creating a design document to lay out what it does and how data flows and allowing the computer to sort out the details based on a stored data set.

"creating a design document to lay out what it does and how data flows and allowing the computer to sort out the details based on a stored data set." This is exactly what programmers do today. We just call the "design document" a "program". Over time, our design documents become higher and higher level, with the programmer having to specify fewer details and leaving more of the work of sorting out the actual details…

Yes, exactly! That's what the article is claiming.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#193

Post by crpatino »

imgabe wrote: post #81
nickbauman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you had a blueprint of the whole of NewYork city, you surely would need some tool to abstract away the maze of individual lines and be able to refer-to/work-with concepts like "Central Park", "the Harlem", or "Brooklyn Bridge".

It is not about how much more information can we convey, but how much less data must be expended to present a tractable model of reality to the human operator. Conveying more details is worse than useless, it results in informationi overload and cognitive stagnation.

Historically, the way it happened in computer programming is those tools are text based. This is as much about the early use of computers as clerical aids to process business data, and the early synergies between computation and linguistics. Maybe it can be done, but it will require millions of man hours to accomplish. And almost nobody wants to invest in doing so because of the cost of opportunity.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#194

Post by ewzimm »

hackguru wrote: post #120
ewzimm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't necessarily judge the future of of a technology by its past. Consider transportation. Imagine it's 1936, automobiles have been around for 50 years, but there are still plenty of people getting around by horse. Some people are claiming that in another 50 years, by 1986, horses will be hardly used for transportation compared to cars, other people say that horses have been used for thousands of years, there's…

What do you mean by computers handling ambiguity? At the end of the day for a idea to become cristalized it needs to be free from ambiguity. That is the case even in human interactions. When using ambiguous language, we iterate over ideas together to make sure everybody is on the same page. If by handling ambiguity, you mean that computers can go back and forth with us to help us remove ambiguity from our thoughts th…

Let's teach our kids the higher level stuff that doesn't ever get old, thinking clearly, engaging in creativity, solving problems, whether through code or whatever means appeals to them. Let's give them options and opportunities, not must mandate memorizing specific facts. Let's teach kids computer science instead of just programming, creative writing instead of just grammar, mathematics instead of just algebra, let's engage their imagination, not just their instincts to conform to expectations!

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#195

Post by [deleted] »

hackguru wrote: post #120
ewzimm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't necessarily judge the future of of a technology by its past. Consider transportation. Imagine it's 1936, automobiles have been around for 50 years, but there are still plenty of people getting around by horse. Some people are claiming that in another 50 years, by 1986, horses will be hardly used for transportation compared to cars, other people say that horses have been used for thousands of years, there's…

What do you mean by computers handling ambiguity? At the end of the day for a idea to become cristalized it needs to be free from ambiguity. That is the case even in human interactions. When using ambiguous language, we iterate over ideas together to make sure everybody is on the same page. If by handling ambiguity, you mean that computers can go back and forth with us to help us remove ambiguity from our thoughts th…

[deleted]

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#196

Post by sedachv »

sokoloff wrote: post #157
brianwawok wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think an oil change is a tune up. Maybe it is.. My honda has 80k miles on it, and has had oil changes + tires replaced. That is it. Compare to a 1970s car and what it would need in the first 80k miles. For even lower maintenance look at electric cars. I think Tesla has very very low maintenance requirements for the first years.

> I don't think an oil change is a tune up. Maybe it is. It's not. I have a couple of 60s Mustangs and several newer cars. My original '65 needs ignition service (what most people call a "tune up") every couple of years (of very modest usage). My '66, converted to electronic ignition, gets about twice as long (and 10x as many miles) before needing ignition service. They both end up fouling plugs because of the terrib…

> My diesel Mercedes and Nissan LEAF obviously never get tune ups.

You don't do valve adjustments on the Mercedes?

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#197

Post by autokad »

Jtsummers wrote: post #163
pystack wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once I figure out the difficult specific and rigid details, I just want the most productive way to communicate these details to the computer. Writing code is the most productive, because it is more exact and I am faster typing than drawing/dragging/clicking. For example, with Vim, I can do a quick "Ack def function_name" to find the definition of a function. For learning purposes, Project Bloks looks great. But when…

I agree and I disagree at the same time. For professional programmers, many people on this forum, the format that we use (text) is almost certainly the most efficient (yet conceived). It's made better with better tooling, of course, like IDEs that help us refactor, show errors in code as we edit, etc. The author's point is that many more people will be programming in the future (hopefully) than are today. But not as…

its much faster to put together a functioning system than it was 10 years ago. For example in ROR, install devise and you already have a login system. I imagine things will keep getting incrementally easier / faster until one day we wont need a 'programmer' to do what we want.

google isn't unaware, I'll try not to put words in his mouth, but a google exec said something along the lines that we aren't very far from needing half of the programmers/ IT people we have today

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#198

Post by brianwawok »

openasocket wrote: post #156
brianwawok wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you write in assembly? If not, you clearly see some gain in more terse syntax. Seems like a good thing to explore, although perhaps it should not be one's sole focus in life.

The difference comes down to syntax vs. semantics. The problem with assembly isn't its syntax (mov eax, ebx is fairly readable), it's that the underlying semantics are too low level. Exploring new abstractions/semantics to use is very useful (local variables, first-class functions, algebraic data types, etc.), but optimizing solely for source program size leads to a language that's great for code golf and not much el…

Not sure. I mean yes you can abuse some languages and fit an entire program on 1 line (see any golf project). But I can generally grok a 100 line scala program in the same time as a 100 line Java program, and the scala program is usually about twice as dense. (So I am groking scala twice as fast).

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#199

Post by autokad »

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…

I dont agree with that sentiment.

50 years ago, it might be conceivable to build auto scaling website that does something like pinterest within a decade, which now can be built in hours.

I'm not just talking about scaffolding and api usage either, so much has changed in coding in the last 15 or so years as well. think object oriented programming, interfaces, and GIT, and other new / useful practices.

the way we store our data is different as well. I believe it was the 70s, but during that time people needed convincing storing data in relational databases was a good thing.

today even that is changing

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#200

Post by sanderjd »

ewzimm wrote: post #194
hackguru wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by computers handling ambiguity? At the end of the day for a idea to become cristalized it needs to be free from ambiguity. That is the case even in human interactions. When using ambiguous language, we iterate over ideas together to make sure everybody is on the same page. If by handling ambiguity, you mean that computers can go back and forth with us to help us remove ambiguity from our thoughts th…

Let's teach our kids the higher level stuff that doesn't ever get old, thinking clearly, engaging in creativity, solving problems, whether through code or whatever means appeals to them. Let's give them options and opportunities, not must mandate memorizing specific facts. Let's teach kids computer science instead of just programming, creative writing instead of just grammar, mathematics instead of just algebra, let'…

Let's teach them computer science with programming as a fantastic way to concretely demonstrate its abstract ideas. (The same goes for math vs. arithmetic!)
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