"My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing." • Hacker News Board

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#91

Post by pkandathil » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:31 PM UTC

murkt wrote: post #76

SMrF wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can check off everything on this list and still write inscrutable code. The worst code I've seen is code that was written so that only one person understands what's happening -- the author. Typically the code has too many branches and ridiculous call stacks. The writing analog is a run-on sentence. This usually happens when the programmer at fault is really smart but still hasn't learned that at some poin…

What you think code reviewing is for?

Totally agree that more code reviews are needed. I guess then the question becomes, how do you teach someone to do a good code review. Code reviews come from experience I get it, so if you are a junior programmer then you get your code reviewed by someone senior. But there is also one very important part to a code review. It being able to give good advice to someone. Not to be over critical but to provide help that is actually going to build someone up. At a company I use to work at, they did this beautifully.

1) Every check in required a code review by a peer. In your commit statement, you specify who reviewed your code.

2) If a senior programmer wrote code for a feature that wasn't too complex he would get a code review from a junior programmer. The junior programmer doing the code review, learned what good code looks likes and second learned how to give feedback in a constructive manner as he was talking to someone with more experience than him/her.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#92

Post by chriserin » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

stevenj wrote: post #69

I think good writing is conversational in nature. I don't think writing code works that way.

Way to take this conversational thread out of the analogy! Its an analogy that is instructional but clearly not applicable for all writing. I hope to never see code that looks like a Faulkner novel, for example.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#93

Post by pkandathil » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:36 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #41

michael_dorfman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those are absolutely true, and many of them reduce to one thing - didn't have a frickin' clue what the code was supposed to do I remember reading the old cartoon (and it was already old when I saw it 25 years ago) of the manager saying "You guys start writing code, I'll go find out what they want", and swearing I would never be that kind of manager only to find, all those years later, that many of my programme…

You say that on a site where the ethos is "start building a company and product now, we'll figure out what it should do later" - because that's a way that works.

37 Signals in their book rework put it really well. You have a business model from day 1. Not everyone is Facebook and Twitter so having a concept of a business model is very important. So yes, having a clear vision of your product is necessary. That vision can change while you are building but you still need to have a starting point.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#94

Post by hxa7241 » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:40 PM UTC

windsurfer wrote: post #31

david927 wrote: post #13

It's a nice theory but I disagree. Programming languages are really just a poor effort towards a mathematical notation. There are those adept in theory that can't practice well, but that's because to practice the art means dealing with a plethora of hacks, exceptions and miscellaneous trivia completely unrelated to the core problem at hand. Personally, I don't think the answer is becoming 'fluent' in handling the exc…

How is mathematical notation different from a written language like English? It conveys meaning using glyphs, uses nouns and verbs (and even adjectives). It expresses all sorts of ideas. One might even say that math's notation is a poor effort towards English.

It is not the superficial appearance, it is the way it is used. Mathematics specifies a particular, limited, well-defined set of actions and relations. It is that character of those 'game rules' that make it mathematical, compared to general language.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#95

Post by alexgartrell » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

timtadh wrote: post #14

klbarry wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard, professors in prestigious schools aren't any better at teaching. They're hired for their prestige and research ability.

All true facts unfortunately. To get better teachers you have to attend a "teaching" college/university. This name is detrimental, as most students would probably be happier at such a place. The "research" university really isn't for everyone but they get the most prestige and people think, oh I should go there learn from the "brightest mind in the field".

The value of Stanford, MIT, CMU, etc. isn't that the professors are so good at teaching; it's that they are smart student aggregators. Nothing motivates you like not being the smart one anymore.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#96

Post by pfedor » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:49 PM UTC

When you've learned two subjects with some depth, you start seeing some analogies. Paul Graham thinks that hacking is very much like painting, and this guy thinks that writing code is like writing English, and at one point in my life I believed that coding in Perl has a lot in common with calculating cross sections.

That doesn't really mean that these things are any more similar than two random areas of human activity. Our brains are just good at finding analogies, finding analogies is like spotting patterns, we see them even when there aren't any and when there actually are some their appeal is difficult to overcome. And if you know two subjects well you have more material to cherrypick analogous things from.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#97

Post by kd0amg » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 4:00 PM UTC

david927 wrote: post #40

windsurfer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is mathematical notation different from a written language like English? It conveys meaning using glyphs, uses nouns and verbs (and even adjectives). It expresses all sorts of ideas. One might even say that math's notation is a poor effort towards English.

Language can be expressive in ambiguous ways, with multiple valid ways to express the same emotion. Notation should be definable, unambiguous, and precise. The fewer ways to express something, the better.

Language can be expressive in ambiguous ways

Having more ways a statement can be interpreted does not make it easier to identify the correct interpretation, so I don't think this is really a reason people have a harder time understanding code or mathematical notation than they do their native language.

And mathematical notation offers plenty of ways to express a given statement (transform with De Morgan's law, contraposition, shuffling and negating quantifiers, etc.).

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#98

Post by skidooer » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 4:07 PM UTC

misuse-permit wrote: post #28

This is a decent analogy, but still I cringe whenever I hear someone comparing computer languages to spoken ones. They are nothing alike, and I would be honestly surprised if we even used the same part of our brain for processing the grammars of human languages as we do for the rigid, formal computer ones. If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become…

> how come not all great programmers are great writers?

I imagine most programmers are great writers from a structural point of view. The rest is emotion. Programmers know how to appeal to machines, but often are not able to connect with people in the same way; something that extends beyond writing, if stereotypes are any indication.

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#99

Post by hxa7241 » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 4:11 PM UTC

moioci wrote: post #46

This discussion brings to mind Robert Lefkowitz's Pycon keynote from 2007 on Programming Literacy, very similar to this video from Stanford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8 . He is definitely an advocate of literate programming and basically says we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code.

> we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code.

Anyone thinking along those lines needs to read Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW... (and maybe tack this on too: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html ).

Re: "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

#100

Post by cschep » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

I like the author's premise. It's hard to find good writing that hasn't been rewritten.. a lot. That seems true to me about code as well. Perhaps we're seeing a lot of "rough draft" code being pushed to production. Novels never get published like that (hopefully!).