"Programming is broken. Completely broken."
What something starts like this it usually translates to: "I don't understand pragmatic hardware/complexity/market etc constaints and engineering compromises".
I want to fix programming
21–30 of 163 posts
Re: I want to fix programming
#22Dear Jon: What you have is fabulous and immediately useful: You are describing a language for describing constraints on the results of computer programs. In other words, you can express the correctness of a computer program and check whether a program is, in fact, correct. It’s true that IF a sufficiently smart compiler could infer a working program from the definition of correctness, no further “programming” would b…
Reg, thanks so much for your comment. I'm really happy you appreciate the value.
It's very interesting that you put the focus in the descriptive language. I've been working on that for a long time. It's not finished, but some areas are clarified. Indeed, after reading your comment I think I will try to focus on getting somewhere workable with that part first.
This whole project is so big. It will be good to do it in the open and use as much help as I can.
Re: I want to fix programming
#23As CPU excess increases, I guess I've always thought that eventually code blocks could be grown using genetics inspired algorithmic processes that could just try everything possible until something works well.
You are underestimating the rate at which the number of possibilities to be searched explodes exponentially. Read the paper on Denali, an optimizer that conceptually tries all possible instruction sequences to compile a piece of a program optimally. Even though they used sophisticated pruning techniques and state of the art combinatorial solvers it didn't work for anything beyond a couple of instructions (less than 10), and AFAIK nothing practical ever came of it. Say you can currently successfully synthesize instruction sequences of length 6. The thing with exponential growth is that even if computers became a million times faster, then you might be able to achieve instruction sequences of length 9, not of length 6 million.
Re: I want to fix programming
#24"Programming is broken. Completely broken." What something starts like this it usually translates to: "I don't understand pragmatic hardware/complexity/market etc constaints and engineering compromises".
Might be. Hopefully not. I have done a huge amount of programming though, so it's not like the reflection comes from ignorance.
Under the mess of spaghetti code that anything out there is now, I see a clean structure of code trying to come out. I want to help it come out to the surface.
Re: I want to fix programming
#25This is called declarative programming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming ), as opposed to imperative programming.
Sure, sorry, didn't mention on the article, Prolog is the closest thing that exists, although I think Prolog commits at least one cardinal sin that breaks the really great properties (/cut/) and it just doesn't get deep enough.
Re: I want to fix programming
#26For those who haven't read it yet, this paper has a lot to say about the cause of programming complexity, Out of The Tarpit: http://web.mac.com/ben_moseley/frp/paper-v1_01.pdf They say that the only essential complexity is the one inherent to the problem the program is trying to solve. Everything else is just here because we haven't yet found the methodology or invented the tools to battle it. They also describe an i…
So I am relatively naive when it comes to declarative programming in general and have not yet read this paper (I will after commenting here), but that said...
Don't you have to (at the very least) tell the compiler how to do things? To reuse the example from the article: when you tell your friend to get you a beer, at some point your friend has learned HOW to get you a beer. Similarly the compiler will need to know HOW to do things that you declare. Sure it will be great when we can just tell the compiler that we need this list sorted in reverse alphabetical order but at some point someone is going to have to program the sorting algorithm on the back end.
Am I way off or are we just talking about a hypothetical future when compilers are (even more) black boxed and we don't have to think about them anymore?
Re: I want to fix programming
#27As an undergraduate, I used a research project at my university that did more-or-less what the author describes. The system was an "animator" for formal specifications called Possum: http://ww2.cs.mu.oz.au/~tmill/tgf/index.html Possum would allow you to directly execute a program that was formally defined using the Sum formal specification language. While it was not able to handle every possibility, I found using it…
I will look at the project, sounds interesting. If it's like that, I can only
I know declarative doesn't solve the problem of correctness. It's really difficult to define correctness per se! But what such an approach really gains is that you can forget about off-by-one errors, unforeseen cross-conditions in stupid details, so much repetitive code, etc... you will still have the higher-level problems of programming, the efficiency problems, the spec-correctness problems, etc... but nowadays you have those, plus the nitty-gritty details of programming in our paleolitic languages!
I know there are a few initiatives in this area, I really want to have an everyday tool that allows using that kind of approach for everyday problems. It will just make everything so much better for us programmers!
Re: I want to fix programming
#28The most common declarative programming language used in SQL. In theory the optimizer takes my declaration and builds an optimum (or at least decent) set of step in the database engine to accomplish what I have declared. With all the work in this limited area, database optimizers get it really wrong quite a lot (Sybase 12.5 was bad enough on big data that forcing order of joins and indexes was needed).
I am not sure we are at the stage where the computer can be trusted with the "what". Most new learners need to be told step by step the "how" and computers seem to be at that stage. Prolog is a nice counter-example, but even it can get itself into some real trouble.
I agree programming is broken, and I agree the whole program knowledge is just painful, but I am think there are some steps before full declarative. As much as I dislike the old VB, it did have a very vibrant component market. That concept didn't seem to evolve or make it to the server. I look at Mongrel2 and wonder if the component approach could be applied. Regardless, I think the biggest problem is lack of ability to separate the pieces of a big project effectively no matter the eventual solution.
Re: I want to fix programming
#29This is called declarative programming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming ), as opposed to imperative programming.
Sure, sorry, didn't mention on the article, Prolog is the closest thing that exists, although I think Prolog commits at least one cardinal sin that breaks the really great properties (/cut/) and it just doesn't get deep enough.
Prolog is a kind of declarative programming, but the two concepts are not the same. From the link: "declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow." This can be implemented in any way one desires.
Re: I want to fix programming
#30We all want, buddy. Now go implement it :)
Sure! I will try to :) I will do so in public, so that I can get as much help as I can.
I'll help what I can. I had a very similar idea, sparked by a conversation in college with a fellow CS major. He was saying how much he liked to program and I said that I hate it. My reasoning was exactly the same as yours, but perhaps broader.
I'd like it if we could get to the point where you say very plainly what you want in your native language (English for me), and then that is interpreted and perhaps more questions are asked by the program until it can implement what you meant. Obviously the problem of NLP is a massive one that will likely never have a perfect solution. There are also the problems of logical inference (if you think this is easy, look up the CyC project). I don't think we should let the current constraints of technology hold us back from designing something better, however.