Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming breakthroughs we need

yoyo-code.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 511 posts

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#41

Post by ziddoap »

wokwokwok wrote: post #24
jrm4 wrote: post #9

Eh, unfortunately the one programming breakthrough the world actually needs is one that would drastically change, and perhaps harm, most of the people around here. We need more "Excels." More and better tools that let "regular" people program.

I'm not going to argue whether the 'world actually needs' that, or if people mostly, actually want that, or if, since excel is already there if you want it, you probably don't have to write, sell or build any more low code tools. ...because, although I could argue about those points, it's fundamentally unrelated to the OP, and issue that programming is hard, and, for a very long time, no one has really had any idea h…

>...but, hot damn. More excels? Please no. Excel already exists. Don't rebuild that stuff again.

I don't think they literally meant another Excel. Just something that is easily accessible and usable by non-programmers to do very 'programmy' things, etc.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#42

Post by ElectricalUnion »

coding123 wrote: post #17

If an AI can now draw a rembrandt, then it's not far off that an AI can read this: Regular users are allowed to edit their own books. Editors are allowed to edit any books with the same account id. The public can read about any book that is not in draft status. I need a domain model where users can write books with the following properties: userId, accountId, title, author, status. status is an enum supporting draft,…

> I think we were wrong about General AI needed to replace programmers

So, the hard part of software is figuring out what you actually need done.

You still need the person writing the system requirements to be precise, accurate and not ambiguous, or you need General AI to figure out if the supplied system requirements meets those requirements.

And when things inevitably goes wrong, or requirements change as they always do, "you just" have to review and rephrase your entire requirement list, or you need General AI to do that for you.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#43

Post by ta988 »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #19
jrm4 wrote: post #9

Eh, unfortunately the one programming breakthrough the world actually needs is one that would drastically change, and perhaps harm, most of the people around here. We need more "Excels." More and better tools that let "regular" people program.

Excel programming errors cost business $$$ https://www.cnbc.com/amp/id/100923538

The question is not just how much Excel costs, it is how much revenue it helps bring in. And in many places, it brings more than it costs. Nothing is worse than a poorly designed webapp that was supposed to solve the "Excel problem" in a process.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#44

Post by ffhhj »

wokwokwok wrote: post #24
jrm4 wrote: post #9

Eh, unfortunately the one programming breakthrough the world actually needs is one that would drastically change, and perhaps harm, most of the people around here. We need more "Excels." More and better tools that let "regular" people program.

I'm not going to argue whether the 'world actually needs' that, or if people mostly, actually want that, or if, since excel is already there if you want it, you probably don't have to write, sell or build any more low code tools. ...because, although I could argue about those points, it's fundamentally unrelated to the OP, and issue that programming is hard, and, for a very long time, no one has really had any idea h…

They mean no-code or low-code tools, but those come with a large hidden layer. These tools are known for making the 80% easy and the other 20% impossible. Excel can also become a mess.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#45

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

conradev wrote: post #27
SKILNER wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular people have their regular jobs to do. They want to use tools, not build them. I'm all into PowerApps and all that, but no-code for anything the least bit sizable or complex is a fantasy from citizen developers.

It is not a fantasy for small businesses, who rely on internal tools and processes to operate. These tools solve real pain points for them and that is why they exist and why it is a fast growing market.

It's a lot of hype right now, not necessarily indicative of staying power. We've been through multiple bouts of "no-code/low-code will replace X" and it has never materialized in any meaningful way.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#46

Post by whartung »

smallstepforman wrote: post #25

I’ve been programming for over 30 years, and never been as productive as before. Need to load and decode a jpeg/png, I grab stb_image.h. Need to decode an ogg file, libogg. Need to decompress, libz. Need to decode video, libavformat. Need physics, libbullet. Need truetype fonts, freetype. Need a GUI, Qt. Need SSL, libssl. My day becomes selecting libraries, integrating them, and testing integration. My business code…

> My day becomes selecting libraries, integrating them, and testing integration.

Funny, being an old, cranky, gray-no-beard, if I wanted to spend my days selecting libraries, integrating them, and testing integration, I would have become a digital electronics engineer.

Your point is well taken, it's just our modern truth. It's just not was attracted me to this world in the first place.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#48

Post by myco_logic »

> It feels like there's an unexplored dimension of abstraction here. Something where generics, interfaces and higher order functions are too static and low level primitives. Something where it's really difficult to pinpoint what exactly is the repeated pattern here and how to exploit it. Instead of generic framework that can do everything, I'd like an efficient way do something specific.

This bit reminds me a lot of a concept Aaron Hsu mentions in his fantastic talk on anti-patterns in the Iversonian languages[0], a paradigm he terms "Idioms over Libraries". The idea being that because of the expressive power of APL's primitives programmers often opt for utilizing easily recalled snippets of symbols over the importing of library code to implement common functionality. This facet of array-lang culture can be seen with sites like APL Cart[1], which serve as indexes of these frequently used snippets.

I think a lot of people miss that this is one of the major advantages induced by the terseness of these languages (it's not just about code-golfing for the implicit joy of laconicism). By allowing for the direct expression of algorithms in the same context they are being used, APL and its kin enable one to tweak and optimize these idioms on a case-by-case basis: precisely the kind of specificity the author of this article is asking for.

[0]: https://youtu.be/v7Mt0GYHU9A?t=1027

[1]: https://aplcart.info/

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#49

Post by 082349872349872 »

whatsakandr wrote: post #40

A paradigm that Dave Farley has mentioned could be on the same level as OOP or structured programming is a completely asynchronous programming language. Every operation would have no garunteee of executing immediately. Such a thing may unlock more performance for cheaper on modern multicore cpus.

When we tried async-everything in the 1980's we discovered that there is such a thing as too-fine grained parallelism: the sweet spot (problem dependent!) is where communication and computation are balanced.

Re: Programming breakthroughs we need

#50

Post by mynegation »

swatcoder wrote: post #37
smallstepforman wrote: post #25

I’ve been programming for over 30 years, and never been as productive as before. Need to load and decode a jpeg/png, I grab stb_image.h. Need to decode an ogg file, libogg. Need to decompress, libz. Need to decode video, libavformat. Need physics, libbullet. Need truetype fonts, freetype. Need a GUI, Qt. Need SSL, libssl. My day becomes selecting libraries, integrating them, and testing integration. My business code…

That’s funny because I feel like my day became cleaning up those kinds of projects as their countless dependencies rot. It feels anything but productive.

What is your alternative then? Vendored-in dependencies with their ossified security vulnerabilities? Or figuring out homegrown code of dubious quality for the functionality that is not core business of the company/product?
Post reply on HN