Is PL notation really that bad? I think the more significant barrier to entry is getting the mental model of programming. Of course not all people can be good programmers, but it doesn't seem all the programming notation would be hard for someone with abstract thinking skills.
Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
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Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#32This post touches upon a subject that I really wish was more adopted: having alternate syntaxes for the sake of _clarity_. Syntax "bread" to the syntax sugar.
For example, regular expressions and date strings can be written in a nice and compact form, but how nice would it be write `Not(DigitalCharacter)` instead of `\D`? Or `TwoDigitYear` and `FourDigitYear` instead of `y` and `Y`. The same convenience exists in short and long command line flags; and optional named parameters in function calls.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#33People are being dismissive of the premise here. But I remember when someone gave me a link to a Haskell repository. I had no idea what was going on, or what those alien symbols meant. I can only imagine that the barrier to entry for Haskell is much, much, much higher than that of an Algol descended language.
If you're familiar with a recipe for baking a cake, the barrier to entry for most imperative languages is small. If you're familiar with Lambda calculus, I imagine the barrier to entry for Haskell is similar.
In both cases, entry is the easy bit. Learning the notation is a somewhat orthogonal and arguably much smaller impediment than the inescapable difficulty of figuring out what you're trying to accomplish, and then how to accomplish it.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#34I agree that if you learn C-style syntax, moving to a more functional syntax (ala Lisp, Haskell) is jarring.
Moving between different C-style languages, once you know one, is not terribly hard however. It really is getting over that hump of learning one language from which you can then take that knowledge into another similar one.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#35I disagree. Java/C# are basically English. It’s not going to get much easier than that.
I’d understand this argument about a language like J, but we can’t dumb J down just so everyone can use it without putting in some effort, or it wouldn’t be J.
The most powerful tools will always have the highest learning curve.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#36Lowering barriers of entry to programming considered harmful to career programmers. If you support it without being manager level or above, you are harming yourself.
That assumes that more programmers doesn’t mean more programmers. I suspect the inverse, the more programmers we have, the more systems they create to program, and the more programmers we need.
Further, the notation is a "tip of the iceberg" issue; the iceberg is semantics, and I suspect anyone who can grasp the semantics well enough to actually build something, can handle the notation (even if there's a notation they could handle better).
Which possibly means - the more notation-capable-but-semantics-challenged people are working in the field, the more work for the semantics-capapble people to clean after them.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#37Slightly off topic: Why do we need to explicitly cast at all?
If the language is strongly typed the compiler should know whether the types are compatible and do it for you or refuse to compile.
I suppose my point is that casting was a poorly chosen example because the obvious solution isn't to have a better notation but to have no notation at all and follow Python's lead with duck typing or functional languages and strong type inference.
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#38People are being dismissive of the premise here. But I remember when someone gave me a link to a Haskell repository. I had no idea what was going on, or what those alien symbols meant. I can only imagine that the barrier to entry for Haskell is much, much, much higher than that of an Algol descended language.
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Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#39Slightly off topic: Why do we need to explicitly cast at all? If the language is strongly typed the compiler should know whether the types are compatible and do it for you or refuse to compile. I suppose my point is that casting was a poorly chosen example because the obvious solution isn't to have a better notation but to have no notation at all and follow Python's lead with duck typing or functional languages and s…
What if you’re reading in a DateTime from a string in a file?
Re: Programming language notation is a barrier to entry
#40Lowering barriers of entry to programming considered harmful to career programmers. If you support it without being manager level or above, you are harming yourself.
We were lucky to get into programming at a time when barriers to entry were low. How could we justify putting up obstacles for those that come after us?