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Peter Naur's view of programming

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Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#151

Post by hydroxonium »

QuercusMax wrote: post #68
rorykoehler wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work should help you in this case. Writing and reading are scalable. 1:1’s are not for explaining how stuff works and why. If you don’t write this all down then you are introducing risk and key person dependency.

Unfortunately for me, I started developing really bad RSI around January of last year, and typing has been incredibly painful. In the past I would have discussed things using whiteboards, sitting down side-by-side with code, etc.; these are all very hard to do if typing causes pain. Interactive sessions are also very helpful, as there are so many assumptions and background material baked into things that often take a…

Might be worth trying Dvorak keyboard layout.

Has worked for many, me included.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#152

Post by rorykoehler »

closeparen wrote: post #66
rorykoehler wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work should help you in this case. Writing and reading are scalable. 1:1’s are not for explaining how stuff works and why. If you don’t write this all down then you are introducing risk and key person dependency.

It's not a one-way transfer of information. - The student has questions that it wouldn't have occurred to the teacher to answer. - The student gets confused and asks for things to be rephrased or reframed. - The student has questions that don't currently have static answers, but get computed by the teacher in real time, according to an intuition and assimilation of the facts that the student is only beginning to deve…

I learned f all in college and everything through reading and watching back video tutorials/lectures. YMMV.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#153

Post by rorykoehler »

solatic wrote: post #63
rorykoehler wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work should help you in this case. Writing and reading are scalable. 1:1’s are not for explaining how stuff works and why. If you don’t write this all down then you are introducing risk and key person dependency.

Reading and writing scale in theory . They require an organization staffed with people who are strong readers and writers. Unfortunately, many people, especially those forced into remote work during the pandemic, are not. They will not read through explicit, clear, but long documentation; they will not respond by writing questions of their own, and will often fail at writing explicit and clear documentation of their…

....They won't do their job.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#154

Post by rorykoehler »

majormajor wrote: post #101
rorykoehler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never been unhappy when provided with thorough documentation.

Do you have any examples of sufficiently thorough documentation? I've basically never been happy with the documentation I've been provided with, whether for internal company code or 3rd party OSS stuff or 3rd party paid stuff...

Just do audits. There are ISO standards for practically everything and you should run internal audits (and external ones if you can afford it for important stuff).

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#155

Post by hathawsh »

QuercusMax wrote: post #68
rorykoehler wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work should help you in this case. Writing and reading are scalable. 1:1’s are not for explaining how stuff works and why. If you don’t write this all down then you are introducing risk and key person dependency.

Unfortunately for me, I started developing really bad RSI around January of last year, and typing has been incredibly painful. In the past I would have discussed things using whiteboards, sitting down side-by-side with code, etc.; these are all very hard to do if typing causes pain. Interactive sessions are also very helpful, as there are so many assumptions and background material baked into things that often take a…

It sounds like you need a secretary--someone who can type fast and dress up your words for wider distribution in the company.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#156

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

rorykoehler wrote: post #152
closeparen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a one-way transfer of information. - The student has questions that it wouldn't have occurred to the teacher to answer. - The student gets confused and asks for things to be rephrased or reframed. - The student has questions that don't currently have static answers, but get computed by the teacher in real time, according to an intuition and assimilation of the facts that the student is only beginning to deve…

I learned f all in college and everything through reading and watching back video tutorials/lectures. YMMV.

cool anecdotal sample of n=1

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#157

Post by btilly »

lmm wrote: post #147
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether this is true depends on what you do. The last update to TeX (widely used in math and computer science for typesetting) was 12 January 2014. A lot of payment processing systems are still running on code written in the 1960s and 1970s. Frequently untouched since Y2K. I have a friend who went to work in the mid 2000s for a company she had worked for in the early 1970s. Out of curiosity she looked up her old prog…

> The last update to TeX (widely used in math and computer science for typesetting) was 12 January 2014. But if you want to actually use it you'll install a much more recent distribution - probably texlive from 2020.

Yes. You'll install a bunch of recent stuff around it.

But the heart of it, TeX, is still the same old version.

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#158

Post by atomicson »

username90 wrote: post #140
ncmncm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better description would be "a liability". Every extra line of code is a line that has to be maintained in perpetuity. Each new engineer has to learn it all again. The saleable product has value. A library you use for multiple products has some value. Everything else is cost.

Engineers are a liabity. You need them to write and fix code that runs your product, but other than that every extra engineer just demands salary and increases your costs. Therefore I conclude that engineers have no value for a company, since when ignoring all the value they provide they just cost money.

It depends on size of the company. Cost is a relative instrument. Develop a big market product, highly demanding, or for a critical mission application is another story for "cost".

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#159

Post by atomicson »

btilly wrote: post #157
lmm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last update to TeX (widely used in math and computer science for typesetting) was 12 January 2014. But if you want to actually use it you'll install a much more recent distribution - probably texlive from 2020.

Yes. You'll install a bunch of recent stuff around it. But the heart of it, TeX, is still the same old version.

Old version? You have to understand that some applications need innovation based on new ideas. TeX is only popular in the academic and publishing world, not like a web browser. Can we write a complex equation in TeX as easy as we write in popular word applications like MS Word?

Re: Peter Naur's view of programming

#160

Post by mcv »

I completely agree with this. I never find documentation very useful, and I'm fully aware I've got tons of theory in my head that I couldn't begin to write down. I should try harder because I won't stay on this project forever, and there are enough complex concept involved that aren't immediately obvious. But how do I write that down? And where do I start?
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