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What Is Code?

bloomberg.com

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Re: What Is Code?

#41

Post by danso »

Part of me looks at this and thinks, "This is preaching to the choir"...because while the engineer in me appreciates all the layers and explorations...It must be incredibly bewildering to anyone who is not a coder, which is the ostensible audience given that the story starts off with, 'We are here because the editor of this magazine asked me, “Can you tell me what code is?”'

But then I see the interactive circuit simulation and think "Fuck it, who cares, this is awesome!". Designing circuits is one of those things that, if I were a self-learned coder instead of a comp. eng major, I would've never delved into...yet learning how to build an adder circuit and getting an appreciation of the most basic building block of computation (and how surprisingly complex it is to just add 1s and 0s) is a profound lesson that I think is essential for me, personally, to really grok programming. All the sections about culture and conferences and etc. are a little bit off-field for me...it's not that I don't think that code and life and human thought and behavior aren't intertwined... * I just think the discussion about conferences reads as if the author doesn't realize that all disciplines spawn conferences and conferences culture. There's nothing particularly unique about code conferences. Not the sexism, not even the nerdiness.

I would love to see the OP's editor respond in a not-quite-as-length essay. What did they learn about code after reading the piece that they didn't understand before?

edit: * I'm emphatically not arguing "Oh but everyone does conferences shittily so tech conferences shouldn't be shamed". Just that having it in this "What is Code" essay makes it seem as if it's a notable "feature" of programming...but that understates the problem by an order of magnitude. Sadly, it's a feature in most every discipline, and the inherent feature is the gender imbalance, not the topic of the conference.

edit: Also, I wished that the section on Debugging was much higher than it is...Robert Read's "How to be a Programmer" [1] makes it the first skill, and that's about the right spot for it in the hierarchy of things. Maybe it gets overlooked because it has the connotation of something you do after you've fucked up. But, besides the fact that programming is almost inherently about fucking up, the skill of debugging really underscores the deterministic, logical nature of programming, the idea that if we have to, we can trace things down to the bit to know exactly what has been fucked up in even the most complex of programs. And that's an incredibly powerful feature of programming...and not very well-emphasized to most non-coders.

[1] http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html

Re: What Is Code?

#42

Post by lordnacho »

thebiglebrewski wrote: post #31

Computer don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more

The lyrics to the original actually make sense for this altered version:

Oh, I don't know why you're not there I give you my love, but you don't care So what is right and what is wrong Gimme a sign

---

Oh, I don't know, what can I do What else can I say, it's up to you I know we're one, just me and you I can't go on

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/whatislovelyrics...

Re: What Is Code?

#43

Post by markbnj »

apaprocki wrote: post #35
markbnj wrote: post #30

I've always wanted to attempt this piece: to take all the many layers of abstraction that we deal with, parse them, convert them, and render them through my formidable linguistic talents into one elegant, beautifully constructed piece of prose that magically makes it all comprehensible to lay readers. I haven't yet attempted it, but I give props to Mr. Ford for trying. I'm not surprised he ended up with a novella. Oh…

Worth noting -- it is roughly 38k words and is the longest piece ever published by Bloomberg.

Yes, it will tell you that at the end, and mock you if you arrive there too quickly to have read it all :).

Re: What Is Code?

#44

Post by ChuckMcM »

That was an interesting piece of journalism. I think though that more and more VPs and SVPs actually do know what 'code' is. While there was a time when it was all mysterious to upper management we're rapidly filling in folks in senior positions (up to CEO even). What new coders don't always get though is that there aren't a lot of new problems in computer science or developing code. Sure people have tried different methodologies to get around the problems in different ways, but the problems were the same (how do I test, how do I track defects, how do I schedule, Etc.) This is good and bad, good because companies get more effective at getting things done, and bad because it can lead to some tension if you can't explain in a quantifiable way why the new way is better than the old way.

Re: What Is Code?

#45

Post by ghshephard »

I had to switch to view/source to read the article. Halfway through there was a shopping cart on wheels obstructing the text (ironic).

*
BPlayer(null, {"id":"P4_i7PihRGiWcPh3gdNMhg","htmlChildId":"bbg-video-player-P4_i7PihRGiWcPh3gdNMhg","serverUrl":"" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/api/embed","idType":"BMMR","autopla...
*

Also - I have no CPU activity at all, so presumably some plugins that are running for others, aren't being executed in my copy of chrome.

Re: What Is Code?

#46

Post by pdiddy »

danso wrote: post #41

Part of me looks at this and thinks, "This is preaching to the choir"...because while the engineer in me appreciates all the layers and explorations...It must be incredibly bewildering to anyone who is not a coder, which is the ostensible audience given that the story starts off with, 'We are here because the editor of this magazine asked me, “Can you tell me what code is?”' But then I see the interactive circuit sim…

Not to your main point, but the circuit simulation reminds me of Silon by SLaks: http://silon.slaks.net/

Edit: Also, as a late-bloomer and self-taught (self-teaching) programmer, I am on the other side of the paradigm you're talking about. Petzold's Code is one of the first books a self-taught programmer should pick up. It is an awesome introduction.

Re: What Is Code?

#47

Post by lordnacho »

danso wrote: post #41

Part of me looks at this and thinks, "This is preaching to the choir"...because while the engineer in me appreciates all the layers and explorations...It must be incredibly bewildering to anyone who is not a coder, which is the ostensible audience given that the story starts off with, 'We are here because the editor of this magazine asked me, “Can you tell me what code is?”' But then I see the interactive circuit sim…

One of the most memorable weeks in my Engineering degree was using Cadence to build a CPU from the ground up. Every transistor, every connection, the ALU, etc was laid down by someone in our little group of students, and then wired together to make a thing with a few thousand transistors. And it friggin worked.

It also showed how the chip itself would be laid out, where the dopants would be and such.

Re: What Is Code?

#49

Post by arxpoetica »

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers.

I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Re: What Is Code?

#50

Post by circlefavshape »

cordite wrote: post #22
merrickread wrote: post #9

My Dad always tells me he flat out does not understand what I do. He respects it, knows it's challenging and fun, but just doesn't get it. I've sent this to him -- he's about 1/4 of the way through and thoroughly enjoying it. This is a very fun read that's worth leafing through

My father sent a small comment chain to me as well on a topic like this on one of his blog posts. June 3, 2015 at 10:12 am I think software developers like to impress people with how many lines of code they can write. June 3, 2015 at 3:31 pm That is not true. A good day is when you leave the office with more powerful software, but fewer lines of code. June 4, 2015 at 4:31 am So why is software always getting bigger ?…

My personal favourite is talking The Business out of things. Solving issues without any coding at all!
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