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The problem with programming and how to fix it

alarmingdevelopment.org

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Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#21

Post by arkh »

repsilat wrote: post #9
lisper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> backslashes in strings There's a simple solution to that: use «balanced quotes»

Does that help if those characters appear in the string? My bet is on editors that let you "type your string into this text box".

PostgreSQL allows dollar quoted strings. $whoohoo$this is a string $whoohoo$. A really good way to include strings in strings as the tag can be almost anything you want. I think it is more flexible than heredoc and friends.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/sql-syntax-lexica...

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#22

Post by trabant00 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #17
Ace17 wrote: post #8

> Programming today is exactly what you’d expect to get by paying an isolated subculture of nerdy young men to entertain themselves for fifty years. You get a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Rubik’s Cube, elaborated a thousand-fold. This is vague and insulting. Many of us programmers spend a lot of energy to keep systems simple, to a point that one could mistakenly conclude that they were easy to write. We don't…

When someone points out a painful truth, it's better to take a good look at oneself, be honest about our flaws, and accept their advice, than to just reject it and consider the other person as mean-spirited. > Many of us programmers spend a lot of energy to keep systems simple "Many" is not good enough (and makes me think of the cringy and problematic #notallmen thing on twitter). Ask yourself: who introduces the com…

> When someone points out a painful truth, it's better to take a good look at oneself, be honest about our flaws, and accept their advice, than to just reject it and consider the other person as mean-spirited.

If I say "you are stupid for presuming this to be the truth", are you going to: a) reject my statement and consider me mean spirited? b) take a good look at yourself and be honest about being stupid?

Be honest about your flaws, accept my advice and never write a comment here again. /s

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#23

Post by mike_honcho »

I disagree. The world we have today couldn't be built on simple tools like Spreadsheets and Visual Basic. The amount of complexity in programming is necessary, and the outcome has been tremendous and miraculous if you think about it.

And we don't want to build a future where the masses should be programming! You want my mother to be programming? My sister? Why? I work as a software engineer and most of the time programming is the last thing I want to do when I get home!

Sure it can be overwhelming at times with all the new technologies coming out, but in the future technologies are going to be completely different, with AI and VR becoming more widespread, programming is going to have to change again. And good, because that is what will allow us to build the future!

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#24

Post by vanderZwan »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #7

I believe that software is not a professional practise but a new form of literacy (in fact the book I am writing is all about this (Real Soon Now, thanks for asking)) And when you see software as literacy a lot of the stuff he moans about simply goes away. Yes it is seen as exclusive and a priesthood - imagine what illiterate serfs thought of those who could write. It took years of practise. No it's not a good idea t…

> No it's not a good idea to make programming more accessible. We don't have easy literature, we don't think someone who reads and writes solely with fridge magnets (#) has mastered the language.

You're mixing up the content of writing with the methods of writing them. Writing "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" is still as poetic when using fridge magnets.

Because of that, you fail to see that modern writing systems were massively improved by making it more accessible than what came before it, and that this has had a major impact on literacy levels as well. We started with Scriptio Continua[0]. We had to invent spaces and punctuation. Originally we just had capital letters. And so on.

And if we look beyond the West (which we should), you will encounter Hangul, which is a phonetic alphabet that points out how arbitrary our letters really are and replaces it with something more systematic and easy to learn[1][2].

Sure, mastering writing is hard. Basic literacy and writing systems do not have to be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua

[1] How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9hzK0K1L4I

[2] Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes, http://www.ryanestrada.com/learntoreadkoreanin15minutes/

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#25

Post by arkh »

cogs wrote: post #11

Programming for beginners is just as accessible as it has ever been, there are good languages (some specifically for beginners: Logo, and game making languages and so on) and good courses. Where do I think programming has stalled is in the business environment. There, as the article correctly points out, it's much harder to automate your job unless you work in an IT department. Most business end-users do their work i…

"Just" use an automating tool: AutoIT if you're ready to do coding or Sikuli if you like their picture based system.

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#26

Post by iainmerrick »

repsilat wrote: post #9
lisper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> backslashes in strings There's a simple solution to that: use «balanced quotes»

Does that help if those characters appear in the string? My bet is on editors that let you "type your string into this text box".

I agree, but even there you can have problems if you want a string containing a newline or tab character!

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#27

Post by david927 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #4

> What reason is there to believe we can improve programming technology to be vastly easier and more accessible? To start with, spreadsheets. So many failed efforts to make programming vastly easier and more accessible have started with almost this exact line. I think it's possible that there is a seductive trap there. We see spreadsheets and we think, “programming that doesn't have the downsides we associate with sp…

> Unfortunately application programming got trampled in the internet gold rush.

No, it didn't

I think if you don't rely on memory but examine the history as Jonathan Edwards has done, you would be surprised to find that the late 1990's was, indeed, a big cliff in terms of application development innovation. You can argue the reasons -- maybe it's not about the internet gold rush -- but you would have to do a small fraction of his research to start to convince me.

> As a result the internet age has seen an exponential increase in the complexity of programming, as well as its exclusivity.

It really hasn't

Frankly, I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. Before the web was popularized, designing a layout meant a using a simple layout tool. Now it's a stack that is at least HTML, CSS and JS, and often more. We're doing more, to be sure, but you can't honestly claim, without a deep ignorance of the past, that it's easier or more inclusive.

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#28

Post by shalabhc »

repsilat wrote: post #15
vanderZwan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't good version control for Excel. Linting is mediocre. And the language itself sucks, because the programmers who work on it don't think spreadsheets are programming, and don't think the people using spreadsheets are programmers. Since you're writing a spreasheet app, I presume you are familiar with Feliene's work on this topic? http://www.felienne.com/publications Also, you probably will find Edwards vid…

> I presume I'm not! Thank you! I've been pretty heads-down writing my thing, but I'll be sure to set aside my evenings to go through both sites exhaustively, and probably try to get in contact with both to ask for feedback.

Also check out Flowsheets by Glen Chiacchieri: https://tinyletter.com/Flowsheets/letters/flowsheets-v2-and-...

Re: The problem with programming and how to fix it

#30

Post by vanderZwan »

trabant00 wrote: post #22
vanderZwan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone points out a painful truth, it's better to take a good look at oneself, be honest about our flaws, and accept their advice, than to just reject it and consider the other person as mean-spirited. > Many of us programmers spend a lot of energy to keep systems simple "Many" is not good enough (and makes me think of the cringy and problematic #notallmen thing on twitter). Ask yourself: who introduces the com…

> When someone points out a painful truth, it's better to take a good look at oneself, be honest about our flaws, and accept their advice, than to just reject it and consider the other person as mean-spirited. If I say "you are stupid for presuming this to be the truth", are you going to: a) reject my statement and consider me mean spirited? b) take a good look at yourself and be honest about being stupid? Be honest…

I'm not the one getting worked up feeling defensive and insulted here, and missing out on potentially good advice in the process.
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