I'm missing where autonomy comes into this.
Peter Naur's view of programming
81–90 of 198 posts
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#82"source code being worthless" is actually a huge red flag that something is deeply wrong with the way our industry works. There is too much in-house knowledge that isn't being codified. Software production shouldn't be like e.g. Jet engine production, where it's all nontransferable lore. I posit if everyone was automatically build able and deployable (say with Nix) across the board. Source code would have more value.…
I think it’s incentives, partially. Programmers say their job is to put themselves out of their jobs. People don’t want to be out of their jobs, really. And we know that doesn’t happen. If anything, it locks them into their job, as “subject matter experts”. Also, most applications are built on a million layers of reusable abstractions. Even in the highest level of the code people are using frameworks and other librar…
> Programmers say their job is to put themselves out of their jobs. People don’t want to be out of their jobs, really. And we know that doesn’t happen. If anything, it locks them into their job, as “subject matter experts”.
I agree it is a fools errand to ask people to work against their incentives, but by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox I don't think there is actually disincentive given enough risk tolerance to let the new equilibrium emerge. Write better programs, and increasing the demand for programming.
I think the bigger problems is most programs are bad and alienated. Programming with everything nicely packaged and ready to be modified is like working with a clean workbench / shop. If you've never been in a clean one, cleaning seems like a chore, but if you have, working in a dirty one seems not only inefficient, but gross and undignified.
It's "take care of your tools, and your tools take care of you" vs being "lord of my garbage heap of tech debt". Any self-respecting craftsperson should choose the former.
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most apps aren't in such a difficult space and keep working basically forever. Sadly, this doesn't match my experience. Software that isn't actively maintained always dies, sooner or later.
Even if the project is 'dead' it still runs, particularly on Windows. I'm running the final release of Winamp as I type this. I organize my hard disk with the 1.0 of Spacemonger, which was free before it went paid. I edit audio files with Sound Forge 11 (up to 14 or so now) and before that I had a pirated copy of 6.0 that worked pretty well. I have a 'programs' folder full of stuff that runs without installation, som…
You are my software twin. I'm using Winamp 2.95 this very moment, and Spacemonger 1.0 which still works fantastically. Both have slight crashes in rare edge cases now but perfectly usable day-to-day. You wouldn't perchance also be using an old version of UltraEdit before the heavy focus on subscriptions?
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#84"source code being worthless" is actually a huge red flag that something is deeply wrong with the way our industry works. There is too much in-house knowledge that isn't being codified. Software production shouldn't be like e.g. Jet engine production, where it's all nontransferable lore. I posit if everyone was automatically build able and deployable (say with Nix) across the board. Source code would have more value.…
You could do all that and the code would still not have any intrinsic worth, because if a company gets their hands on it they don't automatically get a team of developers with domain expertise to maintain it going forward. That's where the real value is. Knowledge and experience can never be codified.
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if the project is 'dead' it still runs, particularly on Windows. I'm running the final release of Winamp as I type this. I organize my hard disk with the 1.0 of Spacemonger, which was free before it went paid. I edit audio files with Sound Forge 11 (up to 14 or so now) and before that I had a pirated copy of 6.0 that worked pretty well. I have a 'programs' folder full of stuff that runs without installation, som…
You are my software twin. I'm using Winamp 2.95 this very moment, and Spacemonger 1.0 which still works fantastically. Both have slight crashes in rare edge cases now but perfectly usable day-to-day. You wouldn't perchance also be using an old version of UltraEdit before the heavy focus on subscriptions?
Hah, no I paid for Sublime Text way back when, and before that I was big on Notepad++. I rarely update either though :)
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#86Source code isn't worthless, it's just not as important as the developers who wrote it because those developers can write a next, much better version, of the same software with the domain knowledge they have acquired writing the previous version(s). In practice this means that source code is disposable.
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#87I agree with the conclusions drawn in the article, but not the premise. Source code is definitely not worthless. Two examples:
1) using source code to find security exploits
2) competitive machine learning algorithms
In the second case, imagine if a competitor had access to algorithms used in marketing for bidding on ads. You know what features it uses, what default values it uses, how it works, etc. You could do some damage with that knowledge
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#88> They would be much faster just building it themselves from scratch, than trying to understand the crummy code we had hacked together.
They might use your code as a reference, especially from any research components of the project.
You'd be surprised what automated analysis of gitlab repos bring to light.
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#89I agree with the conclusions drawn in the article, but not the premise. Source code is definitely not worthless. Two examples: 1) using source code to find security exploits 2) competitive machine learning algorithms In the second case, imagine if a competitor had access to algorithms used in marketing for bidding on ads. You know what features it uses, what default values it uses, how it works, etc. You could do som…
It seems that you not only agree, but argue further that source code is a liability.
Re: Peter Naur's view of programming
#90That's not the post's headline; why did someone cherry pick this subheading? Is this simple clickbaiting?
I think the title was changed by a moderator, but it's actually quite accurate now.