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Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

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Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#31

Post by fogus »

va_coder wrote: post #28
tlrobinson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I can't learn a language very well without having a real project to use it on anyway.

That's true. I'm just thinking my time might better be spent thinking about business ideas, and then trying those ideas out on Heroku. As opposed to learning about some technology that may make me a better programmer but may not really help me get to where I want to be, which is having a successful product that I own equity in. Is it really worth my time to learn the intricacies of functional programming? Am I still…

    Am I still going to be writing code for some 
    corporate overlord 5 or 10 years from now?
Isn't that up to you?

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#32

Post by takeoutweight »

va_coder wrote: post #28
tlrobinson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I can't learn a language very well without having a real project to use it on anyway.

That's true. I'm just thinking my time might better be spent thinking about business ideas, and then trying those ideas out on Heroku. As opposed to learning about some technology that may make me a better programmer but may not really help me get to where I want to be, which is having a successful product that I own equity in. Is it really worth my time to learn the intricacies of functional programming? Am I still…

I fear you've missed the thrust of Rich's talk. Functional programming may seem "intricate" because it is unfamiliar, but if you're willing do do a little bit of up-front unlearning of the massively complex (but familiar) tools you're used to, you may find yourself able to work on projects of a much bigger scale and functionality.

See the slide at 17:20 -- easy stuff (perl,ruby, blurb) gives you 100% speed at the beginning of a project. If you don't expend effort into making things simple, you will "invariably slow down over the long haul."

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#33

Post by spaznode »

va_coder wrote: post #28
tlrobinson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find I can't learn a language very well without having a real project to use it on anyway.

That's true. I'm just thinking my time might better be spent thinking about business ideas, and then trying those ideas out on Heroku. As opposed to learning about some technology that may make me a better programmer but may not really help me get to where I want to be, which is having a successful product that I own equity in. Is it really worth my time to learn the intricacies of functional programming? Am I still…

Did you watch the video? He wasn't talking about tools and he wasn't talking about clojure. It was programming in general and if you have to ask if it's worth your time the obvious answer is no.

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#34

Post by spaznode »

I can't add anything more to what @jsmcgd said but Rich's strange loop talk really brightened my day and more importantly gave me the tools to express what I sometimes try to share with other developers in the clearest way possible. Thanks man, really awesome talk. Invaluable if more people could start thinking this way. (which it sounds like oracle/java 7,8,.. will also help to do whether they like it or not and that's also awesome for that general clump of dev brethren)

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#36

Post by va_coder »

spaznode wrote: post #33
va_coder wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. I'm just thinking my time might better be spent thinking about business ideas, and then trying those ideas out on Heroku. As opposed to learning about some technology that may make me a better programmer but may not really help me get to where I want to be, which is having a successful product that I own equity in. Is it really worth my time to learn the intricacies of functional programming? Am I still…

Did you watch the video? He wasn't talking about tools and he wasn't talking about clojure. It was programming in general and if you have to ask if it's worth your time the obvious answer is no.

Yea I did, but I don't take what Rich says as gospel. I think for myself, not just about code but how I allocate my time.

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#37

Post by snprbob86 »

jsmcgd wrote: post #13

For me this was the best talk I've seen in a long while. It reminded me of how I felt when I first read PG's essays, someone articulating your own suspicions whilst going further and deeper and bringing you to a place of enlightenment and clarity. BTW for those of you who haven't watched it, this talk is not Clojure specific.

All of Rich's talks are great: http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#38

Post by amouat »

stuarthalloway wrote: post #9
gregwebs wrote: post #4

A good talk. Leave it to a lisper though to call testing and type-checking "guardrail programming". Hickey says instead you should reason about your programming without acknowledging that testing and type-checking are ways to have executable documentation of your reasoning about your program. Testing does in fact feedback into complexity - if something is hard to test it may be due to complexity that you realize you…

Difficulty of writing a test can certainly be a complexity indicator, but in my experience the evidence is against testing having served this purpose very well to date, at least for the kinds of complexity addressed in this talk. If you look at around 31:27 in the talk, you will see ten complex things, with proposed simple alternatives. If testing helped people feel the pain of complexity and discover simple things,…

Why do you consider code generators, monkey patching & DSLs to be "testing tools"?

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#39

Post by gregwebs »

stuarthalloway wrote: post #9
gregwebs wrote: post #4

A good talk. Leave it to a lisper though to call testing and type-checking "guardrail programming". Hickey says instead you should reason about your programming without acknowledging that testing and type-checking are ways to have executable documentation of your reasoning about your program. Testing does in fact feedback into complexity - if something is hard to test it may be due to complexity that you realize you…

Difficulty of writing a test can certainly be a complexity indicator, but in my experience the evidence is against testing having served this purpose very well to date, at least for the kinds of complexity addressed in this talk. If you look at around 31:27 in the talk, you will see ten complex things, with proposed simple alternatives. If testing helped people feel the pain of complexity and discover simple things,…

Yes, I am constantly reducing complexity, but only after first writing tests that cover the reasoning of the program so I know that it won't change. Without some of the "cottage industry" of testing tools, it would take me multiple times longer to write tests, and I would do less reducing of complexity.

And yes, I have seen developers make large changes in their code towards simplicity because it was hard to test.

If someone is going to write complex code, they are going to do it with or without tests. If someone is going to write simple code, tests are a wonderful tool to have in that endeavour.

Re: Rich Hickey: "Simple Made Easy" from Strange Loop 2011 [video]

#40

Post by stuarthalloway »

amouat wrote: post #38
stuarthalloway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty of writing a test can certainly be a complexity indicator, but in my experience the evidence is against testing having served this purpose very well to date, at least for the kinds of complexity addressed in this talk. If you look at around 31:27 in the talk, you will see ten complex things, with proposed simple alternatives. If testing helped people feel the pain of complexity and discover simple things,…

Why do you consider code generators, monkey patching & DSLs to be "testing tools"?

I don't. I refer here only to their use in that context.
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