How will you be programming in a decade? • Hacker News Board

Re: How will you be programming in a decade?

#51

Post by pluma » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #48

pluma wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be more convincing if this hadn't been the predicted future for decades already, repeatedly labelling various "human readable" or AI based solutions the new messiah only to realize non-programs are not interested in learning to program and getting rid of the language doesn't change it. Human language is ambiguous. Ambiguity results in errors. We do not accept errors in machines because we expect them to ou…

> "This would be more convincing if this hadn't been the predicted future for decades already, repeatedly labelling various "human readable" or AI based solutions the new messiah only to realize non-programs are not interested in learning to program and getting rid of the language doesn't change it." Non programmers do program a lot, they just don't recognise it as such. What are formulas in Excel if not programming?

It's a common mistake to think that "programming" is an activity that merely describes the act of writing code.

Yes, there are plenty of non-programmers (as in: people who are not identified as programmers by their job title or self-description) who program (including creating amazing monstrosities in VBA).

Describing what a programmer does as "writing code" is only accurate to the same extent that what an accountant does can be described as "putting numbers in spreadsheets". Yes it may be a part of a typical professional's daily work, but even if it is a necessary part (which can be argued), it's not sufficient.

Programming involves a lot more than just writing code -- and that's precisely the part you can't replace by creating a more approachable programming language and what I mean by "learning to program" being what non-programmers typically don't want to do. This is why "thinking like a programmer" is a thing that is separate from "learning programming language X".

Re: How will you be programming in a decade?

#52

Post by noir_lord » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #44

noir_lord wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My main laptop is a 17" Vostro, it's an older i5 (2430 I think) with 8GB RAM, it's absolutely fine for all the development stuff I do on it, if I could get something of that speed with an awesome screen and keyboard for a decent price I'd be so happy. I keep looking at the Thinkpads coming on the market second hand but while they hit two out of three (similar spec, good keyboard) they are still all 1600x900 o…

I don't see a future in tablets. They removed the most important component for a programmer (keyboard). Sure you can get a bluetooth keyboard but then why didn't you get a laptop in the first place? If I'd remove something from a laptop it would be the screen and replace it with the hololens or some other holographic device.

What I want (and I suspect we'll have due to gaming) is super high resolution Oculus, imagine programming in an environment where your screens can be tiled onto a sphere and moved and re-ordered arbitrarily.

Could do something very interesting with that :).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag

Imagine what we could do in 10 years with ^ if the technology takes off this time.

Re: How will you be programming in a decade?

#53

Post by ZenoArrow » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 11:21 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #51

ZenoArrow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This would be more convincing if this hadn't been the predicted future for decades already, repeatedly labelling various "human readable" or AI based solutions the new messiah only to realize non-programs are not interested in learning to program and getting rid of the language doesn't change it." Non programmers do program a lot, they just don't recognise it as such. What are formulas in Excel if not programming?

It's a common mistake to think that "programming" is an activity that merely describes the act of writing code. Yes, there are plenty of non-programmers (as in: people who are not identified as programmers by their job title or self-description) who program (including creating amazing monstrosities in VBA). Describing what a programmer does as "writing code" is only accurate to the same extent that what an accountant…

Using formulas in Excel isn't merely coding. Using Excel often involves designing data models, tracking state, etc... Programming is largely based on organising and storing data, filtering and transforming data and displaying data, Excel does all of the above.

Re: How will you be programming in a decade?

#54

Post by vidarh » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 7:25 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #44

noir_lord wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My main laptop is a 17" Vostro, it's an older i5 (2430 I think) with 8GB RAM, it's absolutely fine for all the development stuff I do on it, if I could get something of that speed with an awesome screen and keyboard for a decent price I'd be so happy. I keep looking at the Thinkpads coming on the market second hand but while they hit two out of three (similar spec, good keyboard) they are still all 1600x900 o…

I don't see a future in tablets. They removed the most important component for a programmer (keyboard). Sure you can get a bluetooth keyboard but then why didn't you get a laptop in the first place? If I'd remove something from a laptop it would be the screen and replace it with the hololens or some other holographic device.

The "future" in tablets is the same as in phones: It's a lighter, smaller computer.

Keyboards and screens are interchangeable

> Sure you can get a bluetooth keyboard but then why didn't you get a laptop in the first place?

Why not both? It is nice to have a lightweight option that can fit in a large coat pocket, yet be able to "scale up" to a full size laptop or a 42" (or larger) 4K display without having to move between computing devices. As hard as e.g. Google and others try to make transitioning between devices seamless, we're nowhere near the point where that is good enough, but we are very close to the point were a tablet or phone is good enough to act as a terminal of the form I described with the help of a keyboard and screen.