Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
prog21.dadgum.com
Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
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Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#2Computer science should only be offered as a minor. You can major in biology, minor in computer science. Major in art, minor in computer science. But you can't get a degree in CS.
The way university is structured, it would be nearly impossible to minor in CS and learn anything low-level or advanced like computer architecture or operating systems. Perhaps you can push out a desirable employee with a practical knowledge of programming, but could you really educate true "software engineers" via a minor?
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#3Computer science should only be offered as a minor. You can major in biology, minor in computer science. Major in art, minor in computer science. But you can't get a degree in CS. The way university is structured, it would be nearly impossible to minor in CS and learn anything low-level or advanced like computer architecture or operating systems. Perhaps you can push out a desirable employee with a practical knowledg…
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Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#4Computer science should only be offered as a minor. You can major in biology, minor in computer science. Major in art, minor in computer science. But you can't get a degree in CS. The way university is structured, it would be nearly impossible to minor in CS and learn anything low-level or advanced like computer architecture or operating systems. Perhaps you can push out a desirable employee with a practical knowledg…
I would actually doubt the usefulness of minors in nearly any subject (holding 2 myself).
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#5"You shouldn't be allowed to write a library for use by other people until you have ten years of programming under your belt. If you think you know better and ignore this rule, then one day you will come to realize the mental suffering that you have inflicted upon others, and you will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of your life."
stunning.
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#6Computer science should only be offered as a minor. You can major in biology, minor in computer science. Major in art, minor in computer science. But you can't get a degree in CS. The way university is structured, it would be nearly impossible to minor in CS and learn anything low-level or advanced like computer architecture or operating systems. Perhaps you can push out a desirable employee with a practical knowledg…
This opinion about CS minor is not controversial. We are almost unanimous to say it is stupid.
AFAIK, automated pretty formatter is not controversial. I wonder if your opinion about pure functional language is controversial.
Thank you for bringing to light some real controversy. In particular the old one about compiler optimisation. See for reference http://books.google.fr/books?id=6kHs4s-79bkC&pg=PA43&...
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#7 It's a mistake to introduce new programmers to OOP before they understand the basics
of breaking down problems and turning the solutions into code.
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#8[update: I've got hold of some of the code. Here's a copy of one of the programmes http://pastie.org/4615158]
I have an awesome story that i think I've told before, but I'll tell it again anyway :)
My father-in-law is a pharmasist. back in the early 90s computers were starting to make their way into Pharmacy and the first few pharmacy sortware packages appeared. this increased with time, as you'd expect. At some point he decided it was inevitible but he decided (I have no idea why, except that he's always been quite independent) he'd write his own software. Took himself off to nightschool and learned dBase III. He'd never written a line of code prior to this.
He then proceeded to write an entire pharmacy suite of software tools that are still in use. They've been heavily updated and added to over the last 20 years but it's still all DBase III running on DOS. It's a saggering amount of code over hundreds of files but it all works. I've seen the code and it wouldn't pass a first semester coding course. each programme is a single 10,000 line spaghetti-fest. I've tried to explain functions/methods to him but he didn't understand and in the end I gave up. apparently he doesn't need them!
I can't understate how complex this software is - it's stock control, point of sale (including the usual things like birthday vouchers, discounts accounts etc etv), prescription dispensing, patient records etc. everything for a modern pharmacy. The australian health dept know about it and it's met all their criteria. it does everything.
It's mindbogglingly awfull bad code by any metric imaginable but yet it's robust, appears to be as-good-as bug free and has been able to be maintained (gov regulations for pharmacy change constantly so it's required major changes each year to keep up to date) and in production use for almost 20 years. oh, and it's fast :)
[Edit: looking at the other comments it seems I've replied to the wrong thing. I was actually writing a comment in response to this http://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html (Write Code Like You Just Learned How to Program) which was linked to from the main article]
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#9Here's my version of his opinions, probably even more controversial :P.
CS should be offered as a major by itself. All the most interesting stuff is CS-specific with indirect applications. Working on something like automatic programming is far more exciting than working on biology or art or what have you. (I can't think of anything more awesome or more CS-only than automatic programming.)
It is a mistake to introduce programmers to OOP.
A complex compiler is awesome. A sufficiently smart compiler may be a myth, but it is a utopian myth; we should strive for it. However, I would take it even further: program synthesis is better still. I'm in the business of telling the computer what to do, not how to do it, so there should be no obvious but unnecessary correspondence between what I write and what the computer executes--they just have to have the same semantics.
You shouldn't be allowed to write a library unless you have a thorough understanding of programming languages and some relevant math. There is always relevant math. Your functions should be accompanied by useful and verifiable laws others can depend on. Or maybe everyone should be encouraged to write libraries regardless of skill level and then the libraries could be ranked a posteriori. Any other guidelines make less sense.
Pretty code is readable and readable code is pretty. If you can render your code as a nice pdf and distribute it as a paper, it's about as readable as it will ever be. Even if you can't, remember that aesthetics aren't random--there is a reason why pretty code is pretty.
Purely functional programming is a straw man. Even Haskell lets you write code that at least acts impure. Haskell is a local maximum. On the other hand: a purely functional spec that the computer uses to generate a potentially impure program should work. But I've already talked about that :P.
I don't know what a "software engineering mindeset" is. It sounds like something a manager would say. Don't do stuff a manager would say. This is unfair to good managers but still a useful guideline. Have as much fun as you can unless people's lives are on the line.
I should note that I don't even think all these opinions are true. But a belief does not have to be true to be useful. If I could boil it down to a single sentence, it would probably be: math and CS theory aren't scary and you should reject conventional "wisdom". But that would be somewhat cheap--two independent and rather unrelated clauses joined with "and" may as well be two sentences :P.
Also, there's something very appealing about throwing out intentionally extreme opinions. I can certainly see why this guy keeps on writing his blog.
Re: Hopefully more controversial programming opinions
#10[update: I've got hold of some of the code. Here's a copy of one of the programmes http://pastie.org/4615158 ] I have an awesome story that i think I've told before, but I'll tell it again anyway :) My father-in-law is a pharmasist. back in the early 90s computers were starting to make their way into Pharmacy and the first few pharmacy sortware packages appeared. this increased with time, as you'd expect. At some poi…
I wonder how much that initial version changed during the 20 years of maintenance.
I find it hard to believe that someone was maintaining it for 20 years without improving the quality (of the code/design) and making it easier to maintain. Have you seen the code base of the initial version or of the version that is currently being used?