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The Eve programming language project is winding down

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Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#111

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

I think the conversation we should have is why we make everything seem so hard. What a bunch of hooey. In 5th grade everyone talked about how Algebra was hard. When I got to Algebra, it was pretty easy. I was very surprised! Of course my dad had to explain it to me, because my teacher was incapable of explaining it. 10th grade, same thing with calculus. Thank god my dad knew calculus and was patient. Because my teach…

What helped me to learn programming as a 10 year old child, was the 80's programming books targeted at children.

Always full of drawings, or little stories, and along the process I got introduced to BASIC, Z80 Assembly and all the intricacies of Spectrum hardware.

I used to think those books were gone, but they seem to have come back regarding Arduino and Rasperry Pi programming. Just focusing on Python and Scratch now.

Giving them a board with such books and some electronic stuff is probably the best way to teach them. Regular computers have too many layers that just hinder learning and its hard to see things happening.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#112

As an Angel investor on the Eve project even though I lost my investment, I think that Chris, Robert and the whole team deserve recognition as they changed the whole industry, and now everyone is following them. I am proud to have had the chance to be involved with them!

> as they changed the whole industry

Huh? What industry are you talking about? The software development industry? Their influence was not even a rounding error. The let's-rethink-programming-completely industry? No idea, but that's not really an industry.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#114

While Eve is an interesting problem, the main issues that makes programming hard are the same thing that makes law hard: 1) Specifying something in an unambiguous way. 2) Knowing what assumptions you are making. 3) Anticipating contingencies. Read a contract or the tax code. Even though they are using English (in the US), it requires an advanced degree to be able to craft such legal documents well. It is the same thi…

Yeah, people talk about necessary complexity vs unnecessary complexity. "Unnecessary complexity" is all those arcane coding rituals that we do, that our users don't know or care about, but we have to do because our current tools demand it. We can't get rid of necessary complexity and so we probably can't design a programming interface for someone that is completely illiterate in math & logic. But what we can do is 1)…

> "Unnecessary complexity" is all those arcane coding rituals that we do, that our users don't know or care about, but we have to do because our current tools demand it.

What exactly do you mean by this? I can think of many things that fit this description but none that don't have good reasons to exist or remain.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#116
Kind of saw this coming after the third reimplementation in yet another language. And why Rust? 2 years ago they decided to use Rust to implement a new language (IIRC Rust wasn’t even 1.0 at that time). That’s a huge amount of technical risk.

I wanted to be exited about eve, but it was always too light on details, had too much risk to ever allow it to succeed, and after several pivots it failed.

This story probably been a bit different if only it was a bit less ambitious, and a lot more pragmatic.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#117

We need to have a conversation about the possible paths to make programming more widely accessible. Chris saw the problem clearly and tried to fix it. Respect. I am most impressed with the number of iterations he was able to crank in the context of a startup. But ultimately a startup may not be the best place to start, because low-end programming is not a short-term growth play. We have to play the long game.

I think the conversation we should have is why we make everything seem so hard. What a bunch of hooey. In 5th grade everyone talked about how Algebra was hard. When I got to Algebra, it was pretty easy. I was very surprised! Of course my dad had to explain it to me, because my teacher was incapable of explaining it. 10th grade, same thing with calculus. Thank god my dad knew calculus and was patient. Because my teach…

>>One thing I’ve noticed is that nothing humans have invented or discovered is hard.

That is true if you are discovering or inventing it. Trying to understand what other people discovered or invented is hard as you are skipping the journey and arriving straight at the results, without going through the dead-ends, u-turns, restarts and various other ups and downs in the journey making many side discoveries including many meta discoveries alone the way.

There is this anecdote from the life of Richard Feynman, that he sort of put his physics textbook aside and worked through all of that on his own and discovered all of it on his own. The reason being its impossible to truly understand things in a deep fundamental way unless you discovered it yourself.

You can learn anything you want. But you have to embark on the journey of rediscovering all of that on your own.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#118
I'm sorry to say but I am happy to see that this is coming to an end.

These guys have delusions of grandeur. At best, they're good researchers looking into new and simpler programming paradigms. But the way they're talking about it is just horrific to me. It's full of "imagine a world where you could just..." and "we're building that world for you" BS.

I just hope Eve's failure is going to be a lesson in humility.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the conversation we should have is why we make everything seem so hard. What a bunch of hooey. In 5th grade everyone talked about how Algebra was hard. When I got to Algebra, it was pretty easy. I was very surprised! Of course my dad had to explain it to me, because my teacher was incapable of explaining it. 10th grade, same thing with calculus. Thank god my dad knew calculus and was patient. Because my teach…

Well, not everyone has the benefits of an educated parent who takes time out of their day to tutor their kids through calculus. Maybe "everything seem so hard" to people without those kinds of advantages.

Truuue that. Not comp sci but ended up taught myself math, coding, and some philosophy.

Re: The Eve programming language project is winding down

#120

This is the same man, Chris Granger, that did a Kickstarter for Light Table, a so-called "next generation IDE," with promotional materials touting as new and revolutionary features that had been standard in IntelliJ, Visual Studio, and even Eclipse for years: http://chrononsystems.com/blog/light-table-concept-vs-realit... Light Table was also ultimately abandoned before completion. Perhaps Granger should rein in his…

He raised a seed funding for a programming language, that itself deserves credit. I think with your attitude, many innovators would have quit from their first or second try? Get a life buddy.
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