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“Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

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Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#141

Post by pdonis »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #105
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you eventually "give up", and clock your 9–5 writing if+for making a fine living, but erroneously pass that off as a mature This comment sure indicates to me where you most likely are on the curve. In all seriousness, I think this is considerably off the mark. After enough experience you realize that expressivity and convenience are antipatterns and don't actually simplify things but are harbingers of complexity, b…

Personally I disagree. We should be using state machines and pure functions. If+for loops are just what's easiest to express in the major languages of today. they are no more or less computationally expensive but due to lack of tooling they are often cheaper to write. In languages and libraries that allow FSM and pure functional kernel based designs you can get just as clear logic that is expressible not just to the…

> We should be using state machines and pure functions.

For problems where those are the right tools, sure. But they aren't the right tools for all problems any more than ifs and for loops are.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#142

Post by pdonis »

reikonomusha wrote: post #95
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you eventually "give up", and clock your 9–5 writing if+for making a fine living, but erroneously pass that off as a mature This comment sure indicates to me where you most likely are on the curve. In all seriousness, I think this is considerably off the mark. After enough experience you realize that expressivity and convenience are antipatterns and don't actually simplify things but are harbingers of complexity, b…

Really, there are no if+for, just compare and jump. Why don't we use what the metal uses, instead of these "expressive abstractions"? If+for have no deeper foundational significance in the construction of programs or computations, literally, than say a lambda function. But because the latter is unfamiliar, it's spoken about in the same manner you present: as if it is some highly abstract, complicating, high-level fea…

> Why don't we use what the metal uses, instead of these "expressive abstractions"?

Because the "expressive abstractions" are much easier to reason about and save programmers lots of mental effort. And, as I have commented upthread, ifs and for loops are by no means the only such abstractions.

> because the latter is unfamiliar, it's spoken about in the same manner you present: as if it is some highly abstract, complicating, high-level feature

If expressing your program in the lambda calculus is easy for you to reason about and saves you enough mental effort, go for it. But don't expect your code to be readable or understandable by many other people. The reason why ifs and for loops (and other "expressive abstractions", since as I have said, those are by no means the only ones) are ubiquitous in programs is that they are easy for lots of programmers to reason about. Whereas the lambda calculus is only easy for a very small subset of programmers to reason about.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#143

Post by koheripbal »

ravenstine wrote: post #74

If you want to go even lower than that, coding is basically just saying yes or no in response to a yes or a no . Sure, that's oversimplifying it, but that's the smallest unit of information being changed during computation. But yes, once you learn the basics that are shared between most programming languages and don't get distracted by the nuances, it doesn't take that long to pick up a different language. Being prof…

All chemistry is just sharing electrons.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#144

Post by kbenson »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #105
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you eventually "give up", and clock your 9–5 writing if+for making a fine living, but erroneously pass that off as a mature This comment sure indicates to me where you most likely are on the curve. In all seriousness, I think this is considerably off the mark. After enough experience you realize that expressivity and convenience are antipatterns and don't actually simplify things but are harbingers of complexity, b…

Personally I disagree. We should be using state machines and pure functions. If+for loops are just what's easiest to express in the major languages of today. they are no more or less computationally expensive but due to lack of tooling they are often cheaper to write. In languages and libraries that allow FSM and pure functional kernel based designs you can get just as clear logic that is expressible not just to the…

In a very real way, it's all conditional jumps in assembly, and every thing you've learned to make programming easier by allowing more directly letting you express your high level intent is just sugar. It might even help some or most of the time. But what you're actually doing is creating a bunch of branches and loops, and as much as the high level stuff might help, you really shouldn't forget this is the medium you actually work in.

Most professions have a healthy respect for the base materials they work with no matter how high the abstractions and structures they build with it go. Artists know their paints, stone, metal, etc. Engineers know their melaterials as well. They build by taking the advantages of each material into consideration, not assuming that it's no longer relevant to their job because they get to just work in I-beams. Programmers would do well to adopt a healthy respect for their base materials, and it seems like often we don't.

Re: “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

#146

Post by Ekaros »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #9

Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.. But software engineering (or development) is much more than just coding.

Isn't software engineering pretty much ifs and loops too? Massively complicated ifs, and looping pretty much samething over and over again.
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