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The future is fewer people writing code?

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Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#101

Post by pm90 »

bdrool wrote: post #97
dasil003 wrote: post #91

Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. What the author doesn't realize is the enormous amount of processing power, shared culture and empathy that goes into human interaction. Even mighty Google doesn't have the compute power or the architect…

> Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. Programmers make it all the time too, or at least something very similar. See all those people who are on the endless quest for the "perfect" language, which usually means one which allows for writing the shortest code, sometimes at a very high cognitive cost for very little payoff. No, I really don't want to d…

There isn't anything wrong with this kind of obsession tbh. We do need SOMEONE inventing, experimenting with new languages and if someone else is excited about doing so I'm quite ok with that :)

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#102

Post by dkarapetyan »

Programming is really formalization. That is the hard part. The kind of thinking required to take something and express it as a set of logical and computable constraints. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at the problem we are never going to have the entire population being able to "program".

It is the same reason despite all the training in mathematics only a few people go on to get a PhD and come up with something novel in mathematics. The rest of the population gets by with basic algebra, not even calculus is required.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#103

Post by ktRolster »

Once upon a time, Excel didn't exist, and if you wanted to do that kind of thing, you needed to program it. So Excel replaced a segment of programmers.

At the same time, many other programming opportunities opened up. We have code in every single doorknob (at least, a lot of them). Some coding usages will be replaced, but others will always open up, at least for the forseeable future.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#104

Post by Jtsummers »

dasil003 wrote: post #91

Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. What the author doesn't realize is the enormous amount of processing power, shared culture and empathy that goes into human interaction. Even mighty Google doesn't have the compute power or the architect…

You agree with the author.

>> No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task.

  The real benefit of something like Project Bloks is that it actually
  removes the code; it allows children to begin thinking
  programmatically, without the obstacle of syntax. And this is a
  tough distinction to make, because people often use “programming”
  and “coding” synonymously. But the fact of the matter is thinking
  programmatically needs to be divorced from writing code: the former
  offers large educational value to a broad range of students, while
  the latter offers very little.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#105

Post by d0mine »

imgabe wrote: post #81
nickbauman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious gap in the writer's mind about computation and programming. It's like the author is suggesting that "eventually we won't need writing: it will be replace by writing-thinking or picture-writing". It's completely absurd. Specific, complex ideas can only be described and communicated in text. Not pictures. Blueprints, for example, have a pictorial element to them, but their fundamental value is our abi…

Blueprints/schematics are far, far superior at conveying the information they do compared to a written narrative. Given the ease of preparing written text compared to drawing schematics nobody would go to the trouble of doing so if that weren't the case.

Graphics can be useful in some domains but nothing beats text in the general case.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#106

Post by ewzimm »

foota wrote: post #90
ewzimm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard, human-level AI would help this a lot, but it isn't necessary. All that's required for traditional programming to become obsolete is for computers to be much better at understanding ambiguity and have a robust model for the flow of programs. With today's neural networks and technology, I have no doubt it would be possible to design something that would create good code based on all the samples on github. Not eas…

There's an important distinction though between being able to write a compiling (or even functional) program and being able to write a program that serves a particular purpose.

I'm talking about human-guided programming without using traditional programming language, creating a design document to lay out what it does and how data flows and allowing the computer to sort out the details based on a stored data set.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#107

Post by corysama »

ISL wrote: post #37

Are there graphical languages that advocates like? The only graphical language that I've encountered professionally is LabVIEW, and I've yet to see an instance/programming style where it has been superior for anything but quick prototyping. A language that's editable in both flowchart and traditional formats could be very useful, if executed in a way that doesn't cripple the traditional side of things.

I've heard tons of praise for https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/ and I've job-interviewed several people who have built simple games without bothering to type code.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#108

Post by Jtsummers »

bdrool wrote: post #97
dasil003 wrote: post #91

Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. What the author doesn't realize is the enormous amount of processing power, shared culture and empathy that goes into human interaction. Even mighty Google doesn't have the compute power or the architect…

> Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. Programmers make it all the time too, or at least something very similar. See all those people who are on the endless quest for the "perfect" language, which usually means one which allows for writing the shortest code, sometimes at a very high cognitive cost for very little payoff. No, I really don't want to d…

Many people looking for the "perfect language" want one that minimizes cognitive costs. An initial increase (comprehensive type systems like in MLs; rust's notion of ownership and lifetimes; Spark Ada's comingling of specification, code, and types) in cognitive cost which, once internalized, results in reduced cognitive costs for certain tasks. Less time spent developing tests. Less time debugging. Less time spent in maintenance (not because it's not needed, but because it goes faster when it's done).

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#109

Post by pessimizer »

imgabe wrote: post #81
nickbauman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious gap in the writer's mind about computation and programming. It's like the author is suggesting that "eventually we won't need writing: it will be replace by writing-thinking or picture-writing". It's completely absurd. Specific, complex ideas can only be described and communicated in text. Not pictures. Blueprints, for example, have a pictorial element to them, but their fundamental value is our abi…

Blueprints/schematics are far, far superior at conveying the information they do compared to a written narrative. Given the ease of preparing written text compared to drawing schematics nobody would go to the trouble of doing so if that weren't the case.

Of course, all of the pieces of information that blueprints and schematics are conveying are 2D layouts. Once you're out of the realm of things whose forms can be reproduced at reduced scale, or simplified to functional equivalents that lie on a plane, the types of useful visual representations of things are sharply reduced; they become extremely stylized, and symbolic. At that point, you've basically arrived at language again.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#110

Post by ktRolster »

50CNT wrote: post #51
buckbova wrote: post #5

> To get there, programming tools should first use our language. For instance, to turn a button red, we shouldn’t have to write code. We should just be able to point to the button and select a shade of red. We've had that for over twenty years.

Concentrating on the "our language" part, we could probably create something that changes setting based on natural language. You'd say Turn the color of button3 in pane4 red Which would be equivalent to pane4.button3.color = 'red' Which is...actually a bit shorter, and a lot more precise. Who'd have thought. CSS is actually pretty close, descriptive and all. #pane4 #button3 { color:red;} Neat coincidence on the numbe…

Turn the color of button3 in pane4 red

Cobol had that idea, and Applescript took it farther. For example:

  tell application "Safari" to activate
It starts to get unwieldy because there are so many parts of speech, and remembering them all and how they fit is a pain. Some people call Applescript a "read only" language because of this.

"Looking like a natural language" doesn't make the language easier to use, at least until we have AI compilers.

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