Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 288 posts

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

#241

Post by i_made_a_booboo »

emodendroket wrote: post #91
vishnugupta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm an oldie and I prefer static typing. Heck, I can't even get my head around dynamically typed languages. And for any non-trivial production level software I strongly believe the choice of programming language has no bearing on the productivity. I.e., a team of Java experts will be as much productive in a Java stack as a team of python experts in a Python stack. A big reason for the recent shift towards dynam…

I agree. People obsess about the choice of programming language, insisting that months of study are needed to choose. I just don't see it except for very specialized tools or applications. That said, I find maintaining an old, large application written in an untyped language pretty miserable.

I've had equal misery both typed and untyped on large, old, legacy stuff.

Maybe programming just sucks.

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

#242

Post by MrEldritch »

shalabhc wrote: post #192
adw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of problems in software engineering, I am convinced (and isn't wild generalization one of the marks of our field! I at least want to own my own hypocrisy here) are communication problems. Nearly all the interesting ones, anyway. And one of them is axioms no-one ever communicates . I've worked with programmers with at least three markedly different axiomatic bases, for want of some less pretentious – and less ex…

So where do Smalltalkers and Lispers go?

Statistically insignificant.

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

#243

Post by pjmlp »

Nursie wrote: post #65
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…

>the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional effort Commercially speaking - it's usually not.

It will be, we just need a couple more lawsuits about faulty software and security exploits.

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

#244

Post by slavik81 »

Koshkin wrote: post #110
Retric wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are still imperative, so all functional code is arguably syntactic sugar over that core causing a lot of leaky abstractions to show up all over the place. I think the problem with Object-oriented programming is it's taught to soon. Start with Imperative then Functional then toss object oriented into your senior year.

> Computers are still imperative "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." — (Mis)attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1970.

Developing computer programs is not computer science, either. The application of science to solve practical problems is "engineering".

Unfortunately, real programs run on real computers and engineers need to deal with that. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

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

#245

Post by kamaal »

LukeShu wrote: post #193
Koshkin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers are still imperative "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." — (Mis)attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1970.

> As a result, primarily in the U.S., the topic became prematurely known as "computer science"---which actually is like referring to surgery as "knife science"---and it was firmly implanted in people's minds that computing science is about machines and their peripheral equipment. Edsger W Dijkstra. Mathematicians and computing scientists: The cultural gap. Abacus, 4(4): 26–31, June 1987. ISSN 0724-6722. URL http://dl…

In the SICP lectures, they explain why names like 'Computer Science' come into being.

They explain it by explaining the origins of the word 'Geometry', which translates to 'Earth Measurement'. What they deduce is when a field is young, its hard to make a distinction between the science behind the field and instruments/tools you spend time with to make the science happen. That is because you spend so much time with the tools that the big part of the work is tool expertise itself.

Until we arrive at the perfect computers and perfect languages, we are going to be stuck with this sort of a phenomenon for a very long time.

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

#246

Post by GenericsMotors »

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…

I hope you stick to webdevelopment and never touch anything remotely related to medical devices, or control systems.

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

#247

Post by untangle »

A Programming Language (APL) started life as a mathematical notation. As such, it is the closest thing that I have encountered for expressing algorithms as code. It is the embodiment of "freeing the hidden algorithm." Fifty examples of such are given in the following link:

http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/50/

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

#248

Post by Nursie »

pjmlp wrote: post #243
Nursie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the attitude that rigor and formal technique is worth the additional effort Commercially speaking - it's usually not.

It will be, we just need a couple more lawsuits about faulty software and security exploits.

How long has this sort of stuff been said though?

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

#249

Post by azeirah »

shalabhc wrote: post #192
adw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of problems in software engineering, I am convinced (and isn't wild generalization one of the marks of our field! I at least want to own my own hypocrisy here) are communication problems. Nearly all the interesting ones, anyway. And one of them is axioms no-one ever communicates . I've worked with programmers with at least three markedly different axiomatic bases, for want of some less pretentious – and less ex…

So where do Smalltalkers and Lispers go?

Mental health facility :(

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

#250

Post by AllegedAlec »

Koshkin wrote: post #142
AllegedAlec wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why astronomers are so incredibly enthousiastic about telescopes, and spend immense amounts of time trying to create better ones to overcome the limits of what they can do now.

Sure, everyone is enthusiastic about their tools. Still, it is not telescopes that are the subject of the science of astronomy.

It's not the subject, no, but the limitations on telescopes are what places limits on how much astronomy can do, and by improving their telescopes, and by improving how they use their telescopes, they can find out more than what they could before.
Post reply on HN