If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#41

Post by darkerside » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

dmreedy wrote: post #10

I believe these are the kinds of ideas that might actually create a genuine engineering culture in software development. Until we start applying this kind of rigor to our work, I don't believe the title of "Software Engineer" is justified. It doesn't have to be TLA+; it doesn't have to be any particular tool or technology or pattern or whatever. But the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional…

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

Parent isn't saying his way is best. He's saying it's the appropriate mindset for some types of software. What you describe might make sense for bespoke web apps (and many other applications), but it may not be appropriate for, say, firmware development, or writing a web server from scratch.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#42

Post by aasasd » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #3

I haven't watched the full talk, so let me know if this gets explored by Lamport, but... Here's a thought: PL researchers seem to generally agree that typed languages are superior to untyped languages, yet programmers tend to prefer untyped languages to typed languages, to the point where Java and C++ have the fanciest type systems in common use, with ML being the closest thing to an academic language that gets signi…

Personally, while I strictly use dynamically-typed languages and wouldn't want to do all that typecast typing in Java, I still use type hints for the IDE—in PHP, Python and JS. Because hints give valuable information and enable IDE features that can be directly used by me in my work, as opposed to typecasts which make me toil for the compiler.

So for me, the divide is that the tools shouldn't make me do work that they can do themselves, namely type inference. And I'm baffled that Java people just outright decided they don't want type inference. They chose to type things that the computer can calculate for them! It makes no sense.

Granted, the usefulness of the work I still choose to do scales with the longevity and involvedness of the code, so I dump hints in scripts that will live for half an hour.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#43

Post by heydenberk » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

georgewsinger wrote: post #34

TLA+ vs. Functional Languages. I once tried to understand how TLA+ could be useful if your implementation language was primarily functional (i.e., Haskell). I wrote to Leslie Lamport on his mailing list and he actually responded with what I think was a very informative dialogue: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/tlaplus/George$20... I hope TLA+ gains more popularity. It's an interesting technology.

You should submit this thread to HN!

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#44

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

dmreedy wrote: post #10

I believe these are the kinds of ideas that might actually create a genuine engineering culture in software development. Until we start applying this kind of rigor to our work, I don't believe the title of "Software Engineer" is justified. It doesn't have to be TLA+; it doesn't have to be any particular tool or technology or pattern or whatever. But the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional…

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

[deleted]

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#45

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

dmreedy wrote: post #10

I believe these are the kinds of ideas that might actually create a genuine engineering culture in software development. Until we start applying this kind of rigor to our work, I don't believe the title of "Software Engineer" is justified. It doesn't have to be TLA+; it doesn't have to be any particular tool or technology or pattern or whatever. But the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional…

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

It's fine when we're talking about leisure-paced art, done by people who deeply care about what they do. But the reality of software development is different. Software is written primarily by people who treat it as a job, and care about it (on average) about as much as they're paid to - and they're being paid by people who don't care about the product, but its ability to make money. Software written in such environment is (unlike music) powering systems that affects livelihoods, health and safety of other people. With the market pushing quality down, we need a countering force pushing it up.

Or, imagine dropping all regulations around planes, cars, food, health care or infrastructure. Would things be handled better by artists, free to pursue quality? Maybe. Will majority of the providers be artists, or even care about quality? No.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#46

Post by about_help » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #25

mad44 wrote: post #9

A summary of the article the talk was based on and some discussion on this. http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2018/07/if-youre-not-writin...

"It's quite likely that during their lifetime, machine learning will completely change the nature of programming." - Why is this the case? Even if it's true, it hardly seems obviously true.

Because soon you will just ask your computer to build your code after giving it a few parameters. Then you will proof read and sanity check the code and spend more time optimizing and working on the really hard problems.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#47

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #39

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They who? Old or new?

"A lot of the new people"

But that's only if they also got some experience working with static typing. Without that, they won't see the difference in difficulty, as they have no reference to compare to.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#48

Post by bilg21 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

dmreedy wrote: post #10

I believe these are the kinds of ideas that might actually create a genuine engineering culture in software development. Until we start applying this kind of rigor to our work, I don't believe the title of "Software Engineer" is justified. It doesn't have to be TLA+; it doesn't have to be any particular tool or technology or pattern or whatever. But the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional…

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

Isn't that why you have titles such as Software Engineer, Developer, Programmer? Software Engineer should have the engineering background and tackles hard problems whereas Developers and Programmers focus on products and features.

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#49

Post by gota » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

It's fine when we're talking about leisure-paced art, done by people who deeply care about what they do. But the reality of software development is different. Software is written primarily by people who treat it as a job, and care about it (on average) about as much as they're paid to - and they're being paid by people who don't care about the product, but its ability to make money. Software written in such environme…

Just a sidenote, reading your comment it occurs to me that I have no idea - and as far as I can tell never read anything about - what is the proportion of code that is done 'for fun' versus 'for pay'.

If anyone has any survey or any discussion on that please reply so I can take a look at it. I'd like to confront my expectations with data

Re: If You're Not Writing a Program, Don't Use a Programming Language [video]

#50

Post by azhenley » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

bilg21 wrote: post #48

batteryhorse wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that engineering is the best approach to writing software. I think this is the fundamental difference between people who prefer static vs dynamic typing. People who prefer static typing are more likely to say that one solution is more "correct" than the other, whereas dynamic typing allows more flexibility. I see writing software to be similar to writing music. Music has rules and structure, but leaves roo…

Isn't that why you have titles such as Software Engineer, Developer, Programmer? Software Engineer should have the engineering background and tackles hard problems whereas Developers and Programmers focus on products and features.

All of these terms are used mostly interchangeably, and it just depends on what company you are at. For example, Microsoft calls them all SDEs (Software Development Engineer) and Google calls them Software Engineers.