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_why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

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Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#81

Post by leif »

leif wrote: post #34
gdp wrote: post #16

Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality. As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal. The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to soft…

Programming as art is little more than masturbation. Useful programming must be done as a science.

haha, wow

nobody wants to challenge me on this?

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#82

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

jgg wrote: post #77
antirez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming as science: not consistent with reality IMHO. My argument is that it's pretty simple to build a good computer scientist: take a guy with good IQ and put it into a good university. But there are zero guarantees that you'll end with a good coder also, as coding is a matter of taste, tradeoffs, design decisions, creativity, ability to think out of the box, and so forth. The problem is that most of our indust…

(Note that this response isn't an attack on you specifically, it's just my feelings towards this argument in general) Where is the magical divide between "art" and "science" in the field? Do the adherents of either side even know what they're defending? If I know what a finite state machine is and how to apply it, does that make me "scientific"? If I hack together a web application in Scheme, instead of some Mathemag…

To quote Theo Jansen, "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Jansen

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#83

Post by ismarc »

jacquesm wrote: post #80
ismarc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An electrician is not given absolute exacting directions on what to do and then follows them by wrote. A master electrician is given guidelines (in the form of regulations) and then a list of what the customer wants. They then consolidate the two into a plan for the building (locations of outlets, fuse boxes, etc.). Once the general plan is done (what power is needed where for what) they have to determine where at wh…

Exactly. Now the big difference to me is in the kind of programming. For instance, the people that write papers on new datastructures, computer vision and other state-of-the-art developments. They're not working with 'requirements' other than 'it would be nice if you found a way to solve 'X', come back in three years'. (well, not quite like that, but closely). That's basic research and a definite amount of artistry i…

I think we're running around agreeing with each other. I think any scientific research involves a bit of art and intuition in the approach to the discovery. I think the only difference would be that I don't consider the research part as programming. It involves programming, but in itself is really the same as any other scientific discovery process.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#84

Post by nostrademons »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
barrkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radically disagree with you there. Wiring is in principle really simple - make sure the right wires are connected, insulated properly with appropriate safeguards; accounting is similar, where there are essentially only four kinds of things. Putting together a large piece of software, or optimizing a particular path in a large codebase, or putting together a creative solution to a class of problems, requires a much hi…

Programming is in principle really simple - make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other and are debugged properly. Sure, putting together a large piece of software is hard, but then again, putting together the electrical system for a nuclear plant or something on that order of complexity is just as hard, if not harder (no 'undo' switch on that one). There has to be a way to see that programming is r…

Almost everything is not hard "in principle", though. In quantum physics, you've got 4 fundamental forces, a handful of elementary particles, and together they explain all of the universe. In medicine, you've got a bunch of organs hooked up to the circulatory/lymphatic/nervous systems, and they make the body go 'round. In molecular biology, you've got 4 bases of DNA and they explain basically everything.

The problem comes from the complex interactions between those elements. You can learn how the body works in high school biology, but that doesn't prepare you to operate on it. Similarly, you can learn how software is constructed ("make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other, and are debugged properly") from Hacker News, but that doesn't prepare you to actually put those lines of code together.

One of the unfortunate effects of Internet forums is that it seems to have shifted attention from the nitty-gritty details of how to do something to the high-level overview of how to do something. So we have a bunch of programming forums where we talk about programming, but never actually program anything. It's not just programming (just look at reddit.com/r/economics), but programming seems to have been one of the most affected disciplines. But I'm afraid that this is giving a skewed perception of the field to newcomers, such that they look at the code they see on blogs or Hacker News and think that's all there is to programming. The #1 reason people fail Google interviews is because they don't have enough depth: they can recite code snippets they found on the web and maybe even put them together, but they can't analyze the performance of their programs or suggest how they might adapt them if requirements change.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#85

Post by technomancy »

gdp wrote: post #16

Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality. As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal. The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to soft…

> As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal.

Funny, that's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect _why to say if he were to take up a new pseudonym and participate in discussions on Hacker News. I'm sure he'd just be trying to convince us that he wasn't actually all that great.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#86

Post by jacquesm »

nostrademons wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is in principle really simple - make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other and are debugged properly. Sure, putting together a large piece of software is hard, but then again, putting together the electrical system for a nuclear plant or something on that order of complexity is just as hard, if not harder (no 'undo' switch on that one). There has to be a way to see that programming is r…

Almost everything is not hard "in principle", though. In quantum physics, you've got 4 fundamental forces, a handful of elementary particles, and together they explain all of the universe. In medicine, you've got a bunch of organs hooked up to the circulatory/lymphatic/nervous systems, and they make the body go 'round. In molecular biology, you've got 4 bases of DNA and they explain basically everything. The problem…

Funny, yes, it really is like that, I call them 'cargo cult coders'.

Able to produce by tying together endless snippets of googled code, it is the professional equivalent of the script kiddie.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#88

Post by jimbokun »

jacquesm wrote: post #80
ismarc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An electrician is not given absolute exacting directions on what to do and then follows them by wrote. A master electrician is given guidelines (in the form of regulations) and then a list of what the customer wants. They then consolidate the two into a plan for the building (locations of outlets, fuse boxes, etc.). Once the general plan is done (what power is needed where for what) they have to determine where at wh…

Exactly. Now the big difference to me is in the kind of programming. For instance, the people that write papers on new datastructures, computer vision and other state-of-the-art developments. They're not working with 'requirements' other than 'it would be nice if you found a way to solve 'X', come back in three years'. (well, not quite like that, but closely). That's basic research and a definite amount of artistry i…

"But after the paper is written up it has solidified and it becomes applicable science, and for the person calling the API that embodies the concept it has become 'mere' bricklaying."

I completely disagree.

The art for the person calling the API is often found in "building something people want." Think of the people who frequent this website. Many of them are writing lines of code to make something people want. Surely there is some art to that. There needs to be an idea, building something to show customers, and iteration on that idea taking customer response into account. The customers have input, but the programmer decides what to write.

Just as wealthy people once commissioned portraits and told the artist what to draw, programmers can be employed someplace where the question of what to program is decided by someone else. But there is nothing inherent in art prohibiting painters from deciding what to paint, or in programming prohibiting programmers deciding what to program.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#89

Post by zephyrfalcon »

tokipin wrote: post #53
gdp wrote: post #16

Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality. As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal. The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to soft…

INTJs : programming as science, maybe a little art INTPs : programming as equal parts science and art this comes from the fundamental difference between left-brain and right-brain conception. namely, the right-brain folks can handle the tiny little details directly and simultaneously and account for them statistically. because of this, they can often rule out or rule in entire chains of reasoning in vast swaths and h…

Hmm. What about INFPs?

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#90

Post by jimbokun »

jacquesm wrote: post #67
ellyagg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a few years ago a study which claimed professional programmers had the second or third highest average IQs of any occupation. Probably depends on how you measure, but you get my point. After 10 years of programming, it's only gotten marginally easier. The fundamental stuff of programming, solving highly complex and abstract problems, never seems to go away. Somehow I doubt bricklayers can say the same.

Programming is part craft, part science, and occasionally a very small dash of inspiration or art. But for the most part I think that a very large amount of it is very comparable to bricklaying. Especially in the part where most people in the IT world make their money, such as software for the financial and the business world. Rarely does it elevate itself to the level of watchmaking and even rarer do you find art. I…

"Bricklaying has been 'industrialized', and one day programming will be too."

This prediction has been made for decades now. I suppose if people keep predicting this indefinitely, someday it will become true.

In the meantime, new programming tasks are invented faster than the old tasks are industrialized.

"Once you get better at programming it is more like knitting or weaving than puzzling."

This is up to you. Was building Google, Amazon, Linux, Firefox, iPhone OS, etc. etc. etc. more like knitting or weaving than puzzling? Maybe what you are saying is that most programmers aren't good enough to build those kinds of products, or would just rather stick to their knitting and weaving. That I would agree with.

"Some programmers are better at this than others and can solve more complex problems."

This is trivially true of any cognitive task.

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