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What Is Code?

bloomberg.com

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Re: What Is Code?

#301

Post by idohealth »

circlefavshape wrote: post #50
cordite wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father sent a small comment chain to me as well on a topic like this on one of his blog posts. June 3, 2015 at 10:12 am I think software developers like to impress people with how many lines of code they can write. June 3, 2015 at 3:31 pm That is not true. A good day is when you leave the office with more powerful software, but fewer lines of code. June 4, 2015 at 4:31 am So why is software always getting bigger ?…

My personal favourite is talking The Business out of things. Solving issues without any coding at all!

Sure, it is a problem. But if you reboot the server everyday, it will not become a problem.

No coding at all required.

Re: What Is Code?

#302

Post by thrwwy5 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #299
thrwwy5 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to have worked well enough for doctors and lawyers. They're unionized (through the AMA and ABA), upper-class professionals who command much more respect from the general public than we do, and whereas our salaries tend to max out at around $150k, theres can easily exceed $500k (in the case of medical specialists or law firm partners).

The AMA and ABA aren't labor unions; outside of government service -- where programmers are also often unionized, too -- doctors and lawyers generally don't have labor unions.

How exactly are they not unions? They lobby for legislation to erect barriers to entry to reduce competition and secure higher wages for their members. The ABA was actually the target of an anti-trust investigation by the Justice Department that resulted in them pleading guilty and paying a fine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association#Antitr...

The AMA (and AAMC, and the licensing boards) should be dealt with the same way, ideally even more harshly.

All your post did was underline just how effective these professions are relative to programmers at securing higher incomes and greater prestige and shaping their public perception.

Re: What Is Code?

#303

Post by snoman »

andars wrote: post #277

In my opinion, this is what society today needs. I don't feel like we need everyone to be able to code, but rather just have a sense on some level that computers are nothing mysterious or magical, unconquerable or incomprehensible, but rather just machines of human creation.

Not sure if we were reading the same article or not, but this is not "what society needs." While there is a part of me that loves computing and wants to share it with the world, I also realize that the nuances of compilation or futures are entirely inside baseball and irrelevant to the vast majority of society at large.

The computer, for most people, is a tool. A means to an entirely unrelated end.

Re: What Is Code?

#304

Post by cfeduke »

mangeletti wrote: post #261
dankohn1 wrote: post #229

I hate to sound hyperbolic, but I can't overstate how impressive this work is. For me, it evokes nothing so much as Tracy Kidder's The Soul of A New Machine [0] for opening up an obscure world (the one many HN posters live in, but obscure to most people). I am amazed both by the technical fidelity and by the quality of the story telling. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...

I agree. This is the best piece of writing I think I've ever read on the web. This touches on everything, and so accurately, and so concisely... this article is giving me a stroke I think.

Same, one of the best things I've read. It may rank above Programming Sucks[1] which is my go to reference for friends when they ask me to explain to them what it is I do.

1. http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Re: What Is Code?

#305

Post by azernik »

fragmede wrote: post #223
loganlucid wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I never heard of search engines working with boolean operators.. I just did a quick search and found this interesting article which gives information about websites using AND, OR, NOT, venn diagrams and concept declarations to deacrease the search node graph....How long ago this search mechanism terminated ???

I... you're trolling, right? Before Google rose to fame, Altavista was probably the most popular, but in order to find what you wanted, you frequently had to add AND, and NOT to your searches, and still needed to dig in a dozen pages in order to find what you were really after. Then Google came along, and the rest of them died.

Possibly not trolling; if the parent post is the usual age of a new college grad (22 years old), Google had eaten the search market by the time they were 10.

Re: What Is Code?

#306

Post by azernik »

ht_th wrote: post #187
michaelvkpdx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're living in a pretty isolated world, my friend. I'd say 90% of my friends would be the audience for this. I've been coding 20 years, most of my friends are successful, grad-degree educated people in a variety of fields, and some of them are even my coworkers. Who is supposed to teach people what code is? Our schools? Who with a CS degree and programming experience would willfully choose to teach in the USA's edu…

I think that Parent made the observation that it is sad that in our information society people (in responsible positions (regarding ICT)) don't know about the fundamentals of the information society. At least, that's what I took from it and I concur. We, as a society, should have started integrating computational thinking (Wing, 2006) as a core competency in the k-12 curriculum from the late 1980s onwards. We didn't.…

We do not love in an "information society", and people do not absolutely need to know the internal workings of computers, any more than a person in 1970 lived in a "radio society" and needed to know how radio or television waves propagated in order to hold a non-technical job.

Re: What Is Code?

#307

Post by cfeduke »

thrwwy5 wrote: post #298
woah wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us keep the sacred arts secret, brothers. EDIT: Just being sarcastic. You are clearly incompetent, coasting along in your job, and afraid of someone with 6 months of experience being better than you.

Seems to have worked well enough for doctors and lawyers. They're unionized (through the AMA and ABA), upper-class professionals who command much more respect from the general public than we do, and whereas our salaries tend to max out at around $150k, theres can easily exceed $500k (in the case of medical specialists or law firm partners).

Hmm. Yeah, I don't know. Its possible to make substantially more than $150K as a high school drop out software engineer. And of course there is these days a cash out option for some.

I'm okay with giving respect to someone who spends 7 years in school - 4 + 3 for law school, or more in the case of doctors, to learn to be professionals in their field. And I have no qualms with what they make either.

Re: What Is Code?

#308

Post by marcosero »

glenntzke wrote: post #225

The activity on the article's accompanying github ( https://github.com/BloombergMedia/whatiscode ) is really interesting. Users have suggested edits not only to the code in the article but even to add citation. This adds another dimension to the content by including the open source community such that the subject matter (coders) can influence (and improve!) their article's content.

Thanks for the link! I had no idea it could have been open sourced!

Re: What Is Code?

#309

Post by radicality »

egocodedinsol wrote: post #177

What an ambitious and beautiful piece! A story like this is probably dangerous - it touches on so many ideas everyone will find something to gripe with, and it's hard to make a comprehensive and consistent story. The last time I read something that so awesomely bridged high level abstractions and low-level implementations with a human touch was Godel, Escher, Bach (albeit with a very different feel). Well done.

Interesting, I wouldn't put this anywhere near the level of Godel, Escher, Bach.

If you've read GEB and do software development, what actually did you find interesting and beautiful in the article? I've just finished reading the whole piece and I don't think I've learned much at all. Presumably as someone who already knows programming and theoretical CS I'm not the target audience, but then I'm also surprised why this has so many upvotes here on HN.

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