What Is Code? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is Code?

#101

Post by fragmede » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #91

arxpoetica wrote: post #49

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers. I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Theres tons of successes, we just refuse to count them. Photoshop (as hinted in the article), is a super special purpose language for doing image operations. It no longer "looks" like coding, so we don't count it as coding for the masses. Excel is a much more general purpose language used by tons of "non-coders" (and arguably the most popular programming language on earth). Again, doesn't (often) look like normal pro…

Two other more contemporary examples are the Android app Tasker, and the website IFTTT ( https://ifttt.com/ ).

There's something about calling it programming that turns certain people off. I remember a story about a freshman in a physical mechanics class that complained about all the MATLAB code they had to write. The professors retort was that they were free to use a slide rule instead, and that particular freshman stopped complaining.

But you're right. The mere act of calling it programming is somehow a problem. It's as if doing programming pigeonholes you into being a programmer until the end of days.

Re: What Is Code?

#102

Post by spb » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

"How often are you going to be multiplying sevens and cats? Soooo much."

Where the fuck does this meme of "fundamental type mismatches come up all the time in ordinary code" come from? What kind of defective system are people writing where it's normal for strings and numbers to be interpreted relationally (even accidentally)?

It sounds like the author is trying to demonstrate the significance of things like syntax transformations and format conversions (like transforming an email address to a mailto link), but that's nothing like "multiplying sevens and cats". It's manipulating things that aren't inherently incompatible - if anything, it's multiplying sevens and "7"s.

All these batshit insane contrived examples in asides like http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-cod... do is make code seem less accessible and comprehensible to anybody who isn't already intimately familiar with what's safe to interpret as sarcasm or hyperbole and what's not, which goes exactly contrary to the stated thesis of the article.

Re: What Is Code?

#103

Post by aswanson » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

bladecatcher wrote: post #68

ForHackernews wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the right-brained. I want that as a professional software developer. I want a computer that will do what I thought, instead of what I foolishly typed. Basically, I want a computer as smart as a good junior dev so I can just yell my brilliant ideas at it, and it will do the dirty work for me.

I remember someone referring to this as "intent driven programming". I once worked for a company that made a business rules engine. The idea was to describe a flowchart to the system and the software would ask what you wanted to do at each step of the flowchart in a top down manner till you fleshed out the whole program ..

Charles Simonyi attempted to design a company around this awhile ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming

Re: What Is Code?

#104

Post by boken » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #60

I kind of like my answer better: http://qr.ae/7NEnT9 The whole post is just a stream of consciousness brain dump that a layman would never understand. I believe it's possible to explain these things without circular reasoning.

"What are the major programming languages, and what are they used for?" is a different question than "Can you tell me what code is?" The second can include the first. But if your and Paul Ford's answers were swapped, both questioners would have good reason to say, "That's helpful but not what I was looking for." To extend your kitchen metaphor, you haven't mentioned anything about why or how your instructions would ever work. You've left out the compiler, interpreter, executor: the human.

Granted, I think Ford expanded the domain of his question a little further than he needed to, for the sake of what looks to be fun. And I think he occasionally picks a piece of jargon where a clearer, more ordinary word would have done just as well—though I'm not in the mood to dive back into the article to find a case.

Re: What Is Code?

#105

Post by scrumper » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #91

arxpoetica wrote: post #49

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers. I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Theres tons of successes, we just refuse to count them. Photoshop (as hinted in the article), is a super special purpose language for doing image operations. It no longer "looks" like coding, so we don't count it as coding for the masses. Excel is a much more general purpose language used by tons of "non-coders" (and arguably the most popular programming language on earth). Again, doesn't (often) look like normal pro…

Excel is a perfect example. The core Excel experience is basically functional programming on a virtual machine with a matrix address space laid out visually right in front of you. It even looks like traditional programming if you dive into the VBA stuff, which plenty of non-technical specialists, including MBAs and managers, do on a regular basis in the pursuit of solving their problems.

Any specialist user willing to invest some time in learning their tools can do this. A culture develops around it.

And replying to parent: those efforts around teaching 'civilians' to code are probably misguided. The investment needs to be in adding scripting and programmability into existing line of business tool, not on encouraging people to sit in front of an isolated REPL disconnected from any business value or context.

Re: What Is Code?

#106

Post by tdicola » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

spb wrote: post #102

"How often are you going to be multiplying sevens and cats? Soooo much." Where the fuck does this meme of "fundamental type mismatches come up all the time in ordinary code" come from? What kind of defective system are people writing where it's normal for strings and numbers to be interpreted relationally (even accidentally)? It sounds like the author is trying to demonstrate the significance of things like syntax tr…

It can happen accidentally quite easily. Someone new to a codebase starts hacking in a feature and mistypes a variable as 'value' instead of 'values'. They fail to realize there's already a 'value' variable in the global namespace (perhaps it's a gigantic spaghetti code mess of a file). They don't have good test cases that exercise this exact line and fail to see the bug. Code ships to production, three months later the line runs and explodes.

Re: What Is Code?

#107

Post by munificent » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:38 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #61

arxpoetica wrote: post #49

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers. I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Not just the right-brained. I want that as a professional software developer. I want a computer that will do what I thought, instead of what I foolishly typed. Basically, I want a computer as smart as a good junior dev so I can just yell my brilliant ideas at it, and it will do the dirty work for me.

As someone who has worked with junior devs before, that sounds like an absolute nightmare.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with being junior. But the rate that requirements are misinterpreted even by intelligent humans is, I think, a fundamental reason why programming isn't doable by the masses yet.

It's not because computers are hard, it's because knowing what we actually specifically want them to do is.

Re: What Is Code?

#108

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

It's 2015. The audience of this article shouldn't even exist. The reader, as described in the article, is a VP who has so little understanding about what it is his company does, that the only meaningful abstraction he can mentally picture is that of his employees "burning barrels of money".

Imagine an auto company VP who says "I don't know anything about engines and drivetrains and all that technical stuff. All I know is that when you guys are in a meeting talking about your variable valve timing system, all I smell is money burning!"

That would not be acceptable. Yet, here we are, over 30 years after the original IBM PC was released, and there's still a corner-office audience for "what is a computer?"

Re: What Is Code?

#109

Post by irq-1 » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #91

arxpoetica wrote: post #49

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers. I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Theres tons of successes, we just refuse to count them. Photoshop (as hinted in the article), is a super special purpose language for doing image operations. It no longer "looks" like coding, so we don't count it as coding for the masses. Excel is a much more general purpose language used by tons of "non-coders" (and arguably the most popular programming language on earth). Again, doesn't (often) look like normal pro…

Remember when search engines had Boolean operators?

Re: What Is Code?

#110

Post by munificent » Thu, Jun 11, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

uptownJimmy wrote: post #64

Superb writing. I wish all professional writers could write this well.

Paul Ford really is in a class all by himself. Everything I've read by him is truly wonderful.

As a writer, it's both inspiring ("look how amazing nerdy non-fiction can be!") and soul-crushing ("look how much better someone else is at writing!"). I try to focus on the former, but, man, he really makes the rest of us look like Celene Dion showing up at your dive bar's shitty karaoke night.