Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#101

Post by nindalf » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:02 AM UTC

hawski wrote: post #87

nindalf wrote: post #78

Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…

I wouldn't say that Excel is harder to learn. I was thought the basics of it in primary school. I don't think Panadas could be thought at the same level, you need to know Python first and that is a mountain, even if there are much higher mountains. With Excel you mostly need to know about cell addressing, =, dragging corner of selection, $, ranges and some basic formulas (that currently are much easier to explore tha…

Right I’m speaking about slightly advanced Excel. Everyone knows how to sum/average columns or apply basic formulae. But creating pivot tables and using macros isn’t self-evident or easy to figure out by clicking around.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#102

Post by MrPatan » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:08 AM UTC

crdrost wrote: post #90

mlatu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excel is powerful, but it’s not easy to learn. It only seems that way to people who already know how it works. this right there. except, it IS easy to learn actually. it's visual, you can click around and find out. if you forget the spelling of some formula, no probs, there is a help button. the interface is what makes it easier, markdown is also an interface. except it's not AS exposed to the user as excel is. peo…

Yeah, I want to emphasize those aspects. • Excel is based on a simpler model of computation, something like the unification ideas in logic programming, state is not named and minimally expressive, etc. You want a looping construct? Better autofill a column or something! • Excel automatically includes printf-style debugging of every object in the system; that is the default state of the system and you have to hide col…

Ima stop you right there and ask how you made the bullet points.

• Is it just a pasted character?

* Is it a markdown thing? * Is it?

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#103

Post by eviks » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:10 AM UTC

Interesting how more deficient designs are promoted as better alternatives just because the author is used to their ineffectiveness

Like the cli example "explain how simple it is to just convert -density 300 input.pdf -resize 50% output.png, and I'm met with a blank stare"

Why would an unsuspecting user ever need to remember (or worse - look it up) that density is "-density" and resize requires explicit % when a GUI app can show the most common flags right there, with in-band help and validate your input (was there a typo in a file name and inupt.pdf doesn't exist?) in real time?

Or the markdown example with tables, which are especially painful to edit one you add just a bit of complications like formatting, which break your tabular alignment, practically requiring you to use both md and formatted output Why would you wish regular users this pain?

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#104

Post by oytis » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:12 AM UTC

ncpa-cpl wrote: post #47

fcatalan wrote: post #13

I find a version of this even with fresh out of college programmers. They just know how to type Java on an IDE, maybe some SQL (using some graphical front end), some HTML/CSS. They can't operate in a Linux dev environment at all, can't use the command line or exit vi or perform any kind of simple shell based automation or use git without a plugin for their IDE. And they also are reluctant to learn because they are se…

> I find a version of this even with fresh out of college programmers. I've noticed something with boot camp programmers too. Something that may have changed is that newer graduates may have studied programming because "it pays well", and not because they were computer hobbyists before deciding what to study. I've been on meetings with some programmers that didn't know how to use a gui ftp client or how to manually u…

It's been a while since I've last used FTP, so it might be just a generational thing. I for one have no idea how to connect to a BBS.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#105

Post by leoedin » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:14 AM UTC

The problem is mainly one of discoverability. The non-programmer in the examples says "simple" when they mean "discoverable". The programmer says "simple" when they mean "not much code complexity".

Of course you disagree.

All the examples - installing and using a package manager, running a command line program - are "simple" from a software point of view, but they're not at all "discoverable". To understand the steps you need to memorise a seemingly meaningless sequence of text.

Of course, the programmer has a very strong underlying model of all of this, and so these commands seem straightforward. But even for a programmer, this stuff isn't very discoverable. I'm frequently stumped by man pages, and end up having to hunt down an example of how to use a particular command line application on Stack Overflow. I've been using linux for decades and I still often can't find where an applications binaries or config live, and I still very often have to type some magic incantation I found on Stack Overflow into the command line, because my mental model of some subsystem of Ubuntu isn't complete enough to know it. None of these things are discoverable - I've got more patience than most in searching Google and Stack Overflow, but it's not exactly a desirable way of using a computer. I would prefer it if there was a nice button in the system settings that did what I wanted.

When things aren't discoverable, they become hard. And people don't generally like doing hard things. That's not exactly a revelation.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#106

Post by mejutoco » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:15 AM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #78

Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…

Not contradicting you. Just adding this famous case of using Excel.

> the median Excel user probably completes this task quicker and better than the median pandas user

Some might complete it with catastrophic effects.

> A million-row limit on Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software may have led to Public Health England misplacing nearly 16,000 Covid test [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#107

Post by asddubs » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:17 AM UTC

MrPatan wrote: post #102

crdrost wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I want to emphasize those aspects. • Excel is based on a simpler model of computation, something like the unification ideas in logic programming, state is not named and minimally expressive, etc. You want a looping construct? Better autofill a column or something! • Excel automatically includes printf-style debugging of every object in the system; that is the default state of the system and you have to hide col…

Ima stop you right there and ask how you made the bullet points. • Is it just a pasted character? * Is it a markdown thing? * Is it?

it's a character

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#108

Post by yipbub » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:18 AM UTC

rockemsockem wrote: post #34

flamebreath447 wrote: post #31

I want to point out two additional observations. 1. There are a decent amount of software engineers or programmers whom literally aged at the perfect time to organically learn these tools that later became fundamental. If you even touched a computer from the 60s to the late nineties in a engineering aspect at all, you were bound to have worked in a terminal, worked on computers with a single core, worked on computers…

Literally no part of that post was condescending, it was an observation about how wildly different those with a certain level computer knowledge use computers from the general pubic. Which is interesting since so much of the world runs on computers. Sure your points are accurate, but, so what?

No part of the comment you replied to implied the post was condescending, just seems to me to be a reminder of some things we often forget when this topic comes up :)

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#109

Post by oytis » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #20

nicolas_t wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of college grads don't know how to operate in a linux dev environment? That'd be an immediate no-hire from me.

Most lol. You only hiring MIT and Stanford grads?

I graduated in a third world country. We did have a course or two on Unix.

Re: Speak English to me: The secret world of programmers

#110

Post by nindalf » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

mejutoco wrote: post #106

nindalf wrote: post #78

Literally everything I write is in Markdown because it’s so simple to me. I use it for blogposts, presentations, documentation, todos, internet comments. But this article doesn’t strike a chord with me. The author fails to understand that it seems easy to us because we’re familiar with it. Of course we know how to transform it into PDF or HTML. But this knowledge isn’t basic, and it’s understandable that people want…

Not contradicting you. Just adding this famous case of using Excel. > the median Excel user probably completes this task quicker and better than the median pandas user Some might complete it with catastrophic effects. > A million-row limit on Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software may have led to Public Health England misplacing nearly 16,000 Covid test [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

Yeah, that's the flip side of a simple tool that makes it easy to solve problems. It's not clear when "simple" stops working or how to recover from it. On the other hand, the bespoke software approach can have bugs too.