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Burn the Programmer

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Re: Burn the Programmer

#171

Post by cirgue »

arethuza wrote: post #18
yetihehe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what those "wizards" do. If it's just making some formula in spreadsheet work, it's not too awesome. If it's stopping time[1], that might be more "magical". [1] https://hackaday.com/2017/11/09/stop-motion-with-the-time-gl...

"it's not too awesome" Maybe if you had seen some of the eldritch devious monstrosities I've seen people create in Excel (even without VBA) you might reconsider that statement. Be very worried if someone says "we have this Excel spreadsheet that needs to be turned into an app"....

If programming is wizardry, things written in Excel are definitely necromancy: the end result is shambling, hideous, and unnatural, but for certain things it gets the job done.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#172

Post by berbec »

stryan wrote: post #10

Considering how many programming abstractions most programmers work above now, I'd say it's more like magic now then ever before. Draw the circle (add the boiler plate code), recite the words (dig up the proper API method), perform the gestures (compile with certain flags) and your spell (desktop app) will work. If you don't, it'll do nothing or worse, blow up in your face. As a side note, if anyone's interested in l…

I recall enjoying that series. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at some point he brings a friend over to his world and gets made fun of for programming magic in Forth.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#173

Post by pdkl95 »

From the first comment:

> I don't think we're looking at a Butlerian Jihad any time soon

I personally know many people that see something Butlerian Jihad-like as inevitable. Most say they would regret the loss of some technology, but the appeal of being free of complex wizardry trying to manipulate them in ways seem forever outside their understanding has increased a lot over the last few years.

A small-ish subset of that group are actively trying to start a Buterian Jihad. Don't write off the possibility of blowback from the growing group of people that feel technology (and the people that make it) are "disrupting" their income wht remains of their agency over their own lives. There are many ways that could play out - most are not full revolts against technology - but predicting the future is hard. What I do know is that when you see pitchforks and torches... it's too late.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#174

Post by japhyr »

I teach high school math and science, and I fully recognize that most of my students will not end up in math and science-focused careers. So I think pretty carefully about my goals for these students.

One clear purpose in everything I ask students to do: take away the sense of "magic" in technological things.

I just finished teaching a math class, where the final project was a 3d modeling exercise. Students didn't always enjoy the process, but they were deeply satisfied with their work in the end. Most of them will never model anything again in their lives. But we've removed the idea that when they see an amazingly detailed 3d-printed prosthetic limb, that the designer was doing some kind of magic. They know that the designer worked from the same principles they learned, the only real difference is that the designer enjoyed this work enough to stay with it and become highly proficient at it.

These are all students who will not want to burn programmers, but who will instead understand the hard work that goes into well-designed apps and products. They will also know that people who design crappy or harmful products can do much better and much different work.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#175

Post by marvy »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #125
throwanem wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's far from rationalist fiction Is that bad? Like any didactic subtype of the genre, rationalist fiction often struggles to succeed in both of the goals set for it; the only example I've as yet found enjoyable - and extremely so! I strongly recommend it - is Unsong by Scott Alexander, also of Slate Star Codex.

Seconding Unsong . The end felt kind of cheap to me, but the journey was absolutely worth it.

Agree on both counts.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#176

Post by greenleafjacob »

te_chris wrote: post #44
everyone wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt that wizard thing when I was just starting out, for most of my career though, i've thought an apt analogy is tradesman. eg. carpenter or metalworker. We get commissioned to build something that does X. Then we design and build it. With experience we develop our own tools / practices and a familiarity with our materials. Experienced masters might experiment and develop completely novel things or masterworks. So…

I think plumber is more apt: We take shit and send it places so people don't have to think about it.

A lot of programming work being done today is information plumbing. Creating pipes that move information from one place to another. Regulating and monitoring information flow rates. Unclogging pipes that are backed up.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#177

Post by psyc »

b0rsuk wrote: post #51
dkarl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people look at skilled construction contractors and assume they could be just as good with a very small amount of study and practice. People see us as having a completely alien ability that they intrinsically lack. That makes us like Harry Potter wizards, people with an inborn gift that makes us capable of learning things that are beyond the reach of normal people. The difference between us and wizards i…

That's quite true. When you say you're a plumber, people can at least ask half-assed questions or provide a story when they were doing that themselves. When you say you're a programmer, the conversation usually ends with "Oh.". They have literally no clue how to get into the area. How many of you have girlfriends who are genuinely interested in your craft and regularly talk with you about it ? Say, once per week. But…

I had a girlfriend with a CS degree from Princeton. She didn’t care much about code, and didn’t want to talk about it.

Another had an MIS degree. She loved my enthusiasm, but didn’t care much about the content.

Another was a photographer with a tremendous amount of curiosity about everything. She listened raptly for hours at a time to every word I said about every low-level or mathy thing. She took it all in and asked great questions. Then she learned programming and became a software project manager.

I believe the biggest factor in the difference in interest was the “cares about people” vs “cares about phenomena” spectrum.

In general, though, I would never even bring up the topic with friends or girlfriends.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#178

Post by jrs95 »

jimbokun wrote: post #52
stryan wrote: post #10

Considering how many programming abstractions most programmers work above now, I'd say it's more like magic now then ever before. Draw the circle (add the boiler plate code), recite the words (dig up the proper API method), perform the gestures (compile with certain flags) and your spell (desktop app) will work. If you don't, it'll do nothing or worse, blow up in your face. As a side note, if anyone's interested in l…

This is exactly the reason I despise Spring with a deep and abiding passion. "Just add this dependency, and add these annotations to your class, and it will all Just Work." "But...what do those annotations actually do ?" "Stop asking so many questions!" I mean, I know the answers are out there, it's open source after all. But so much of it seems deliberately designed to obfuscate the flow of execution and make reason…

I generally agree, but it's not entirely Spring's fault. The underlying APIs they're using are awful. If I were doing anything Java EE based, I'd still prefer to be using Spring Boot even with it's warts. It might be a framework for a framework (Spring MVC) for another framework(Java EE)...but it's still less of a pain than dealing with the underlying frameworks directly.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#179

Post by jrs95 »

sanderjd wrote: post #126
jimbokun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the reason I despise Spring with a deep and abiding passion. "Just add this dependency, and add these annotations to your class, and it will all Just Work." "But...what do those annotations actually do ?" "Stop asking so many questions!" I mean, I know the answers are out there, it's open source after all. But so much of it seems deliberately designed to obfuscate the flow of execution and make reason…

I agree with annotations like this making it harder to reason about control flow, but I don't really get the consternation about "what do these annotations do?" so much. You can go read their documentation or source yourself to answer that question. How is that different than anything else? Same thing with "rails magic": yes, it sucks that you can't grep for method definitions, but you can go peruse the has_many meth…

This really isn't too difficult to do, but it is a time sink I'd rather not have to deal with. With Spring in particular there's a huge amount of complexity so it can take a bit of time to determine exactly what's going on. Whereas with something like Go, I generally have full control over my applications control flow and if I need to look at a libraries source it's typically very straightforward and to the point.
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