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Design, Composition and Performance [video]

infoq.com

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Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#21

Post by jfarmer »

jballanc wrote: post #10

For me, the most poignant message in this talk is when Rich draws the contrast between learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task, and learning a new programming language, which seems to be increasingly accompanied by "learn X in 5 days" type tutorials. A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need…

I'm one of the co-founders of Dev Bootcamp, although I'm no longer involved day-to-day. What it means to "learn to program" is nebulous. As you pointed out, a person regurgitating things they've seen is able to "program" in some sense.

What I can say that the priority is not so much teaching them X, Y, or Z framework, but teaching them what it means to "think like a programmer." You might not think that is teachable, but, well, empirically falsifiable. :)

I'd definitely call students who went through DBC "programmers." Many of them remark after graduating that they never realized how little they really knew. At the very least, we get them from unconscious incompetence to the bottom rung of conscious competence.

If all I were doing were teaching folks "cords[sic] from 10 popular tunes" I'd have no interest in doing it at all. Real programmers or bust.

I can't speak for anyone else, of course.

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#22

Post by cgag »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #17
jonahx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing links to your other favorites?

Just look down http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey . Probably the most famous talks are "Simple Made Easy" and "The Value of Values". I'm also a big fan of the talk on persistent data structures, simply because it was my first introduction to them.

Yes, "Simple Made Easy" is a must watch imo. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

"Are we there yet" is also great: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic...

I also love "Hammock Driven Development": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#23

Post by saraid216 »

jballanc wrote: post #10

For me, the most poignant message in this talk is when Rich draws the contrast between learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task, and learning a new programming language, which seems to be increasingly accompanied by "learn X in 5 days" type tutorials. A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need…

> learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task

Google "learn to play the guitar in 5 days".

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#24

Post by saraid216 »

agentultra wrote: post #12

Another very interesting talk. He always gets me thinking even if I don't always agree with everything he says. I don't think programming languages should be like instruments. I find it awkward working in Haskell or Clojure because I'm a composer and not a performer. I might be writing a rock opera one day and some chamber music the next. As a composer it seems completely wrong that I should contort my expression of…

Amusingly, this may be the best response I have to your comment: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/music-functional-language

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#25

Post by agentultra »

saraid216 wrote: post #24
agentultra wrote: post #12

Another very interesting talk. He always gets me thinking even if I don't always agree with everything he says. I don't think programming languages should be like instruments. I find it awkward working in Haskell or Clojure because I'm a composer and not a performer. I might be writing a rock opera one day and some chamber music the next. As a composer it seems completely wrong that I should contort my expression of…

Amusingly, this may be the best response I have to your comment: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/music-functional-language

I've used and jammed on several live-programming environments for sound in Common Lisp and scheme over the years. I like the style of language particularly for those reasons because you can reach a point where you're not programming functions that operate on primitive data structures anymore (although that is what is ultimately executed); you begin to develop a language that makes sense for describing musical processes. And that's just easier to reason about.

Nice link! :)

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#26

Post by tom_b »

jballanc wrote: post #10

For me, the most poignant message in this talk is when Rich draws the contrast between learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task, and learning a new programming language, which seems to be increasingly accompanied by "learn X in 5 days" type tutorials. A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need…

I'm particularly interested in the idea of programming practice. Hickey specifically mentions Coltrane, who apparently was famous for marathon practice.

As a workaday hacker, my own practice has been more sporadic than I want. This talk reminded me that practice needs to be structured and purposeful. And regularly done.

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#27

Post by paperwork »

bchjam wrote: post #8

I love it when musical and computational composition get paralleled. I just saw a different talk focused on this theme recently, focusing on Goldberg variations using the Overtone library in Clojure. You actually get to hear things build up as you see the code do the same in this one, really cool. video: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/functional-composition repo: https://github.com/ctford/goldberg (edited to ad…

Also at infoq: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/music-functional-language

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#28

Post by jballanc »

jfarmer wrote: post #21
jballanc wrote: post #10

For me, the most poignant message in this talk is when Rich draws the contrast between learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task, and learning a new programming language, which seems to be increasingly accompanied by "learn X in 5 days" type tutorials. A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need…

I'm one of the co-founders of Dev Bootcamp, although I'm no longer involved day-to-day. What it means to "learn to program" is nebulous. As you pointed out, a person regurgitating things they've seen is able to "program" in some sense. What I can say that the priority is not so much teaching them X, Y, or Z framework, but teaching them what it means to "think like a programmer." You might not think that is teachable,…

I have always been a huge proponent of the concept of teaching the art of learning, as opposed to teaching a specific skill. My concern is that, as Rich discusses, truly learning to program is a slower process, at the outset, than learning how to piece together a handful of frameworks and code snippets from Stackoverflow.

A proper education lasts longer than the duration of the actual instruction, so I trust that some of these "short term" programs can still make programmers (and anecdotally, I've heard good things about Dev Bootcamp).

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#29

Post by rartichoke »

He's definitely right about how most people want a lot of choice but in the end it's going to paralyze you for most use cases. I made this realization a few months ago.

I can't count the number of months I lost trying to research things at levels of the stack that I'm not interested in but were forced to look into to get to the point where I wanted to be.

It's mostly the reason I started to use rails to build document-like web apps/sites because if I have to answer 35 questions and build a platform on top of node/express just to get to the point where I can start solving the problems I want to solve then I'm clearly at the wrong level of the design stack.

Re: Design, Composition and Performance [video]

#30

Post by tinco »

saraid216 wrote: post #23
jballanc wrote: post #10

For me, the most poignant message in this talk is when Rich draws the contrast between learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task, and learning a new programming language, which seems to be increasingly accompanied by "learn X in 5 days" type tutorials. A performer who has already mastered one or more musical instruments will be better able to rapidly learn a new one, but a novice is going to need…

> learning an instrument, which no one pretends is an easy task Google "learn to play the guitar in 5 days".

> which seems to be increasingly accompanied by

I learned to program from a 'learn X in 24 hours' book over 10 years ago.

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