Wait, is there any other reason to want to become a wiza- I mean programmer?
Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
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Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#12I think it's interesting that people associate programming with magic, but I don't think it's the most enlightening comparison. The actual magic, from my perspective, is social skills and the ability to organize/manipulate people.
People like magic narratives because magic acts as a force multiplier for a single person. The force multiplier in real life is the ability to organize a bunch of other people to do stuff for you. The real Merlin is Steve Jobs or Obama. Just like magic, the ability to do this is generally an inborn talent (theoretically it could be learned, but you can't do anything to change whether it's the kind of thing you like to do, just like you can't do anything to make yourself like golf enough to make yourself practice as much as Tiger Woods).
There are weaknesses to this comparison, of course. In real life when you are using social engineering to further your goals, you become beholden to the network of interests that support you (e.g. politicians, customers). Also, in real life the ability to gain positions of influence is not distributed in any egalitarian manner.
One of the reasons magic is appealing to programmer types, is because they tend to be weaker in these areas, and they wish that they could have access to the same sort of power, but based on the things they are good at (studying tomes, complex incantations) rather than the things they aren't good at (networking, salesmanship). If magic were real, I would definitely be dedicating a lot of time to mastering that, but even knowing the power of politics I am not particularly interested in becoming a politician.
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#13Great quote! -
"Programmers are still stuck writing their incantations down in a way that devices made of elaborately etched metalloids — powered by lightning energy gained from harnessing the power of the wind, water, or, most commonly, motion itself via the liquified corpses of ancient beasts that used to dominate the earth — can understand and execute."
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#14This is one of the more fun corollaries to Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced engineering is indistinguishable from wizardry".
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#15I think it's interesting that people associate programming with magic, but I don't think it's the most enlightening comparison. The actual magic, from my perspective, is social skills and the ability to organize/manipulate people. People like magic narratives because magic acts as a force multiplier for a single person. The force multiplier in real life is the ability to organize a bunch of other people to do stuff f…
it's not just a question of beholdenness or privilege - the real distinction between technology-as-magic and social-engineering-as-magic is how the bill for your force multiplication is paid. if you manipulate/organise people into doing things for you you have definitely achieved some sort of leverage, but there's no real feeling of magic because you know that at the bottom of the pyramid, other human beings have had to put the work in.
what makes magic magic is that the forces you manipulate and control come for "free" - not in the sense that you don't have to do any work to access them, but in the sense that any output over and above your input is drawn from some more fundamental reservoir of universal energy.
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you have to work hard, you have to do the tough job, you have to know every tiny part that can go wrong during the show I absolutely agree. My intent wasn't to describe programming as magic in the sense that it's easy or as simple/nonsensical as waving a wand around. It's very much a discipline. I was drawing the parallel to magic in that it's an ethereal exercise—you describe what you want to happen, and then the…
The message was not indeed directly at you but more for new comers in the programming world. Just to remind them that without the hard work part, they'll end up doing small tricks at dinner. They can't expect to run the show in Vegas. And yes I feel very alike Gandalf some day, summoning intruders: you shall not pass!
Summoning intruders? That sounds like the last thing you'd want to summon!
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#17I'm reminded of a scene from the Inheritance series of books that I read when I was younger. The main character, Eragon, was telling his mentor how he blessed an orphan baby with the magic words " Atra gülia un ilian tauthr ono un atra ono waíse skölir frá rauthr ". His mentor's response was "Wait what? Are you sure you said skölir , and not sköliro ?" Turns out while he had meant to say "May luck and happiness follo…
I read those when I was younger as well. I came away not a huge fan of the series because of the (in my opinion) poor writing and huge plot holes.
Why didn't he just bless the kid with "May you be a killer of Galbatorix, and may no one else die in the process."
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#18Author ought to start referring to themselves as a technomancer, it helps the mystique.
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#19I'm reminded of a scene from the Inheritance series of books that I read when I was younger. The main character, Eragon, was telling his mentor how he blessed an orphan baby with the magic words " Atra gülia un ilian tauthr ono un atra ono waíse skölir frá rauthr ". His mentor's response was "Wait what? Are you sure you said skölir , and not sköliro ?" Turns out while he had meant to say "May luck and happiness follo…
I read those when I was younger as well. I came away not a huge fan of the series because of the (in my opinion) poor writing and huge plot holes. Why didn't he just bless the kid with "May you be a killer of Galbatorix, and may no one else die in the process."
The extremely derivative plot didn't help either. I actually came away with an active dislike of the series.
But, I like the connection to semantic errors.
Re: Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic
#20I think it's interesting that people associate programming with magic, but I don't think it's the most enlightening comparison. The actual magic, from my perspective, is social skills and the ability to organize/manipulate people. People like magic narratives because magic acts as a force multiplier for a single person. The force multiplier in real life is the ability to organize a bunch of other people to do stuff f…
The ability to organize other people is not the only force multiplier in reality, and it's very little like magic. Programming is like magic because software is divorced from reality but also steeped in it. SICP does a better job of explaining this then I can.
"We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."
"A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform."
The only other force multipliers I am aware of that have the same property are language and math.
SICP source if anyone wants to read the whole thing. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html#...