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Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

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Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#51

Post by sokoloff »

rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

The population who currently struggles with its/it's and they're/their/there, basic (con)sequential logic, and even universal remotes is unlikely to become productive in anything like our current text-based languages.

For this flocking to happen, it's going to look more like a spreadsheet, block language (Scratch-esque), or Hypercard type system than a text language. Even there, I don't expect it to become a mainstream activity.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#52

Post by gtycomb »

rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

Basic plumbing may be picked up by almost anyone and by and large we call a professional plumber to fix the leak.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#53

Post by petercooper »

intertextuality wrote: post #42
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

Agreed, I think programming as a skill will follow a similar arc to automotive engineering.

Early on it was highly specialized, but from the 50s-80s it was generally expected that you knew how to maintain your car and would do the basic jobs yourself (oil, tires, maybe even filters). But now? A lot of people now would even call out AAA to change a wheel.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#54

Post by thrownaway954 »

rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

You do realize that the author was a programmer before becoming a baker.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#55

Post by FreeFull »

intertextuality wrote: post #42
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

I think the vast majority of people isn't even aware that programming is a thing. Back when computers used to present people with a BASIC prompt, people had a better chance of finding out about it and getting into it.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#56

Post by mst »

istjohn wrote: post #33

I have only ever been a tech hobbyist, but I have leveraged my Python skills in a similar way. I run a home cleaning service with my wife, and I started using Airtable to track clients, jobs, expenditures, employee hours, etc. The data entry became tedious due to having to make entries in multiple tables for each job, so I wrote a Python script to use a simple command line read-eval-print loop to collect job informat…

Seconding tkinter - tkdocs.com will show python examples if you click the right button.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#58

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

snazz wrote: post #12
whynotminot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very important point. Choose tools that are: (1) right for the project (2) right for the current team (3) right for the future team (3) might be hard given you don't know who joins later, and the engineers might also not have a say if they're not involved in hiring. But you can generally make decent guesses. The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel?…

SQL gives the developer an option to build a front end of some sort, though, which might be able to get the ease of use to a similar level to that of Excel.

Based on the description of how it works, all of the business logic is baked right into the database. With this design, it should be straight forward to build a front end in something like Flask or Rails since all of the hard business logic is already done. And this would not break his current emacs workflow at all.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#59

Post by bluGill »

intertextuality wrote: post #42
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

I don't want it to change by much. Yes we need more programmers, but we also need more doctors. It is not practical to become a great doctor and a great programmer.

Those are but two of that millions of different jobs that are required for modern society to function.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#60

Post by altotrees »

Stories like these are the ones that inspire me the most. People using technology in a way that helps them in their everyday lives, or in a hobbyist fashion. I feel like many of the things I pick-up at work are out of career necessity: the latest framework, bits of an up and coming language that is going to be "the future", semi fluency in a stack so I can aid in a project,I enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it like in the same way I once did.

Probably my favorite programming memory was teaching myself Java as a teenager and building games for my friends and I to play. No responsibility, if they worked...great, if not oh well. It was exhilarating. I do not think programming will ever become a lingua franca, as stated in other places here. I think hobbyist programmers may pop up more and more,or people who know enough to build small tools for themselves (not to scale) and I don't think that's a bad thing.

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