41–50 of 54 posts
Much of this thread is a dismaying example of responding only to the title. Titles are the bikesheds of HN. This is an article about learning programming from Alan Perlis in 1983—a rich topic. "Is programming poetry?" was obviously not meant to be taken literally: the subtitle is "yes and no" and the text makes clear that Perlis was being provocative. The article deserves deeper attention than this. It's about learni…
> Think about the greatest, most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Some of them took more than 500 years to build. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of the computer programs we will build over the next 500 years? Now that is inspirational. I've managed to spend my software development career mostly writing programs that I feel are meaningful and useful, and I'm very thankful for that. But nothing I've written is g…
Fell in love with this one years ago, and still love it... #!/usr/bin/perl APPEAL: listen (please, please); open yourself, wide; join (you, me), connect (us,together), tell me. do something if distressed; @dawn, dance; @evening, sing; read (books,$poems,stories) until peaceful; study if able; write me if-you-please; sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone); do*not*die (like this) if sin abounds…
Much of this thread is a dismaying example of responding only to the title. Titles are the bikesheds of HN. This is an article about learning programming from Alan Perlis in 1983—a rich topic. "Is programming poetry?" was obviously not meant to be taken literally: the subtitle is "yes and no" and the text makes clear that Perlis was being provocative. The article deserves deeper attention than this. It's about learni…
so why not change the title? The title is a very clear question.
Much of this thread is a dismaying example of responding only to the title. Titles are the bikesheds of HN. This is an article about learning programming from Alan Perlis in 1983—a rich topic. "Is programming poetry?" was obviously not meant to be taken literally: the subtitle is "yes and no" and the text makes clear that Perlis was being provocative. The article deserves deeper attention than this. It's about learni…
Wow, thank you for that link. Never saw it before. Perlis really did deliver on his intention to give us a "pou sto to last the student for 40 years, not a handbook for tomorrow’s employment." Every time I've encountered a new language or framework (Java, Ruby, Rails, whatever), I've been grateful to him. He also delivered on his intention to keep us "on the computer early and often." I didn't get much sleep that sem…
Edit: I had to look up pou sto. Turns out it's Archimedes' "place to stand" from which he could move the earth. In other words, the best possible foundation. A high aspiration for a programming language course.
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-machine.html William Carlos Williams On poems as machines made out of words "To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But…
I thought it was painting. ps: among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions.
That can only be because you don't understand APL or its principle of condensed simplicity. This is one of those cases where the reflexive judgment is completely wrong. We're so used to code being sprawlingly complex that APL and its derivatives seem obviously perverse, when in fact they are lyrical, and the problem is with us and our 'obvious' preconceptions.
If APL were a matter of intentional obfuscation you would never hear a student speak like this 30 years later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10481967.
I thought it was painting. ps: among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions.
> among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions That can only be because you don't understand APL or its principle of condensed simplicity. This is one of those cases where the reflexive judgment is completely wrong. We're so used to code being sprawlingly complex that APL and its derivatives seem obviously perverse, when in fact they are lyrical, and the problem is with us and our 'o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions That can only be because you don't understand APL or its principle of condensed simplicity. This is one of those cases where the reflexive judgment is completely wrong. We're so used to code being sprawlingly complex that APL and its derivatives seem obviously perverse, when in fact they are lyrical, and the problem is with us and our 'o…
Hold on, I think you think I meant APL was obfuscated in a negative way. I love APL, I love reading IOCCC. It's not enterprise or team-project compatible but there's so much beauty in there. We're in agreetion, aren't we ?
> Think about the greatest, most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Some of them took more than 500 years to build. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of the computer programs we will build over the next 500 years? Now that is inspirational. I've managed to spend my software development career mostly writing programs that I feel are meaningful and useful, and I'm very thankful for that. But nothing I've written is g…