The Eve programming language project is winding down • Hacker News Board

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#161

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:19 AM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #147

indubitable wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure programming can be made accessible, and there's a very specific reason for this. Simplifying the medium of something (in other words making it so somebody could genuinely learn a programming language, from nothing, in 5 minutes) does not necessarily make task implementation any easier. Consider writing. It's something that anybody of mean intelligence is more than capable of. And writing a novel requires n…

> Simplifying the medium of does not necessarily make task implementation any easier. Except when it does. Programming in an IDE with code completion, IntelliSense, on-line help and an attached debugger is easier than going all macho developer and programming exclusively in raw text with the pico editor, using println traces as debug. Sometimes, merely reducing the cycles that the human brain wastes on interacting wi…

[deleted]

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#162

Post by gbarcher » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:20 AM UTC

jonathanedwards wrote: post #32

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

Why should programming be more accessible? There are too many programmers already. The only persons benefiting from it are the ones in the huge teaching/conference/consulting industry.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#163

Post by sreaching » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:20 AM UTC

exikyut wrote: post #132

Tom4hawk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is much bigger problem: > because my teacher was incapable of explaining it

Education is broken, and not "impulse-fixable", ie it will require years of collective concerted effort to affect change, if it is ever fixed at all. "A dad who knows ____ and can teach it" is, on the other hand, a practically-attainable real-world solution.

he would have learned it regardless of his dad teaching him - because he is smart. education can't do much to change the population distribution of intelligence.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#164

Post by rtpg » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:22 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #114

paulhodge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, people talk about necessary complexity vs unnecessary complexity. "Unnecessary complexity" is all those arcane coding rituals that we do, that our users don't know or care about, but we have to do because our current tools demand it. We can't get rid of necessary complexity and so we probably can't design a programming interface for someone that is completely illiterate in math & logic. But what we can do is 1)…

> "Unnecessary complexity" is all those arcane coding rituals that we do, that our users don't know or care about, but we have to do because our current tools demand it. What exactly do you mean by this? I can think of many things that fit this description but none that don't have good reasons to exist or remain.

Here's some really silly examples. They all have reasons, and it makes sense in context, but it's part of the deal.

- Java code needs to be in a class. I can't open up a file and start typing immediately

- bool(midnight) being false

- C header ifdef silliness to make sure you don't double include a header

- circular dependency import issues in many languages

- strings and bash as the lowest common denominator meaning that almost everything that glues commands together must first write a parser for the output of `ls`

- our not putting encoding explicitly into files meaning that there have been decades of people getting weird glyphs when sending files to each other.

- implicit str to bytes and back in Py2 causing billions of spurious decode/encode calls. And many more incorrect calls

All this stuff is small , and has reasons. But it's also stuff that's been around for decades and decades and cascades into massive weirdness. Death by a bazillion idiosyncrasies.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#165

Post by dukoid » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #160

flukus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Unnecessary complexity" is all those arcane coding rituals that we do, that our users don't know or care about, but we have to do because our current tools demand it. What exactly do you mean by this? I can think of many things that fit this description but none that don't have good reasons to exist or remain.

In the 80's, you would turn on your C-64 or ZX-Spectrum or Oric-1 or Dragon-32 or Atari 800, and type: PRINT "This is nice" and it would. Then, you would type: 10 FOR I=1 TO 10 20 PRINT "This works too! Number ",I 30 NEXT I 40 GOTO 10 And it would. Today, you go to your computer and ... open an IDE, define a project, pick your Java environment, select "file new", write some random incantation of "public static void m…

Would you mind taking a look at https://github.com/stefanhaustein/codechat ? WDYT?

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#166

Post by simias » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

jonathanedwards wrote: post #32

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

>We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible

I assume that means you think that programming is not accessible enough as it is? Why do you think that? As far as engineering disciplines are concerned I consider software engineering one of the most accessible to complete newcomers. All you need is a computer, something that's not very hard to procure these days (at least in wealthy countries). Then you have endless tutorials online, from learning to code websites to video games to raytracers to databases to physical simulations to neural networks.

As a self-taught programmer (who started coding in BASIC at around 15) I never found programming particularly hard to approach.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#167

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:32 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #135

netheril96 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Webpack config?

Correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not familiar with it. But isn't that a way to declare dependencies and share the information with other developers? That's something that has a good reason to exist. Replacing that functionality would involve a way more complicated solution to the same problem.

Everyrhing depends on the scope. Webpack is a complicated tool solving a complex problem, which makes it useful in large projects. But it's also way overcomplicated and unnecessary for small projects. A lot of incidental complexity comes from misapplication of powerful tools to simple problems.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#168

Post by robertkrahn01 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:42 AM UTC

I'm very sorry to see this. We need investment in programming language and environments – and right now there is pretty much zero of it. No, new programming concepts and tools will not pay of immediately but in the long term they can be incredible efficiency multipliers, empowering pros to do more work in less time and non-pros to be programming in the first place. As long as no one is interested in funding this kind of research & development we stay where we are today.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#169

Post by michaelt » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:50 AM UTC

HolyHaddock wrote: post #139

exikyut wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is broken, and not "impulse-fixable", ie it will require years of collective concerted effort to affect change, if it is ever fixed at all. "A dad who knows ____ and can teach it" is, on the other hand, a practically-attainable real-world solution.

> a practically-attainable real-world solution. I can't be understanding this correctly. Please expand, I fear otherwise this is going to be at the back of my mind all day.

If you are a parent with a school-aged child, and you want to fix a deficiency you perceive in calculus education, it's easier to get strong at calculus and teach your child yourself than it is to reform the education establishment.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#170

Post by TuringTest » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 10:58 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #158

TuringTest wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simplifying the medium of does not necessarily make task implementation any easier. Except when it does. Programming in an IDE with code completion, IntelliSense, on-line help and an attached debugger is easier than going all macho developer and programming exclusively in raw text with the pico editor, using println traces as debug. Sometimes, merely reducing the cycles that the human brain wastes on interacting wi…

That's comparing writing longhand to using Microsoft Word. The latter helps, but doesn't make writing novels fundamentally easier; in the same way, an IDE doesn't make programming fundamentally easier.

If by "fundamentally" you mean "devoid of any practicalities that may affect the actual task of doing it", I agree.

However, there may ''also'' exist tools that help in the fundamental task. In the example of writing a novel, professional writers use spreadsheets that help them keep track of the general picture, and follow the details of each character, scene and plotline. It doesn't help with the task of being creative and artistry, but hell if they don't help the writer keep track of every detail that's important to the final result.