'The Problem With Programming and How To Fix It' (alarmingdevelopment.org) 560
Jonathan Edwards has been programming since 1969 (starting on a PDP-11/20). "Programming today," he writes, "is exactly what you'd expect to get by paying an isolated subculture of nerdy young men to entertain themselves for fifty years. You get a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Rubik's Cube, elaborated a thousand-fold."
theodp summarizes the rest: To be a 'full stack' developer, Edwards laments, one must master the content of something like a hundred thousand pages of documentation. "Isn't the solution to design technology that doesn't require a PhD...?" he asks. "What of the #CSForAll movement? I have mixed feelings. The name itself betrays confusion -- what we really want is #ProgrammingForAll. Computer science is not a prerequisite for most programming, and may in fact be more of a barrier to many. The confusion of computer science with programming is actually part of the problem, which seems invisible to this movement."
It wasn't always this way, Edwards notes, citing spreadsheets, HyperCard, and the many incarnations of Basic as examples of how programming technology can be vastly easier and more accessible. "Unfortunately application programming got trampled in the internet gold rush," Edwards explains. "Suddenly all that mattered was building large-scale systems as fast as possible, and money was no object, so the focus shifted to 'rock star' programmers and the sophisticated high-powered tools they preferred. As a result the internet age has seen an exponential increase in the complexity of programming, as well as its exclusivity."
"It is long past time to return to designing tools not just for rock stars at Google but the vast majority of programmers and laypeople with simple small-scale problems," the essay concludes, arguing we need new institutions to fund changes in both the technology and culture of programming.
"We've done it before so we can do it again, even better this time."
theodp summarizes the rest: To be a 'full stack' developer, Edwards laments, one must master the content of something like a hundred thousand pages of documentation. "Isn't the solution to design technology that doesn't require a PhD...?" he asks. "What of the #CSForAll movement? I have mixed feelings. The name itself betrays confusion -- what we really want is #ProgrammingForAll. Computer science is not a prerequisite for most programming, and may in fact be more of a barrier to many. The confusion of computer science with programming is actually part of the problem, which seems invisible to this movement."
It wasn't always this way, Edwards notes, citing spreadsheets, HyperCard, and the many incarnations of Basic as examples of how programming technology can be vastly easier and more accessible. "Unfortunately application programming got trampled in the internet gold rush," Edwards explains. "Suddenly all that mattered was building large-scale systems as fast as possible, and money was no object, so the focus shifted to 'rock star' programmers and the sophisticated high-powered tools they preferred. As a result the internet age has seen an exponential increase in the complexity of programming, as well as its exclusivity."
"It is long past time to return to designing tools not just for rock stars at Google but the vast majority of programmers and laypeople with simple small-scale problems," the essay concludes, arguing we need new institutions to fund changes in both the technology and culture of programming.
"We've done it before so we can do it again, even better this time."
Arduino? (Score:2)
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Arduino is C++. A lot of the documentation basically says "refer to the samples" and the samples themselves are poorly commented. Arduino is awesome, but it's not easy. It's just easier than MCU programming has been in the past.
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I'll stick to C++ on Ardunio myself but programming Arduinos with Python, toolchain-free, is now a thing thanks to small onboard flash storage, complex but hidden bootloaders, and more powerful microcontroller chips such as the Cortex M4.
https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython/what-is-circuitpython [adafruit.com]
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Maybe he is looking for python?
What about Python on an Arduino?
https://github.com/micropython... [github.com]
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Not really. What you get is ... not done (Score:5, Insightful)
What you get when you let coders decide where to go is nothing. Ever. At least nothing that's ever done. Mostly because you get this and that and something else because all of those things are absolutely necessary, and then eternity to accomplish it all. If programmers were to make a toaster, it could toast anything from bread to waffles to muffins and even your sweater, because someone sometimes thought it might be helpful (but we don't remember who said that, but we also can't remove that sweater-module anymore without breaking the rest), it would measure its own temperature based on all the toasting done before to determine the perfect toasting temperature and time (both would be measured by three different sensors and devices), you'd have to give detailed feedback on your toasting and eating experience that would then be used to create a heuristic based on world wide averages... Well, that's the theory. Right now it's basically a stove top with a pan attached.
Re:Not really. What you get is ... not done (Score:5, Interesting)
You've got to factor in product and project managers too. As in "guys, we've got a big potential customer who suggested that sweaters might be toasted, so can you get this done by next week? I already told them we'll have a demo, so don't let me down." and "it would set us apart and be disruptive to the toaster industry if this could wash dishes too."
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Is our basic education system a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what percentage of individuals have the core foundation to even absorb how to write code.
Just my 2 cents
Re: Is our basic education system a problem (Score:2)
Interesting. The complaint I hear most often in the UK is that there's too much emphasis on exam results in core subjects (english, maths, science) at the expense of art and humanities.
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Where I come from e
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I can see the limit on some people when trying to walk them through specific problems, drawing things on the white board, explaining the implications of X, Y and Z etc., and they really struggle to see it. But the people that are good get it naturally with limited information transfer.
I do think that having an environment/set of tools t
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I think proper exposure to coding is the main issue.
I think that if you can show a kid in high school that there's a class of problems that a computer can do a lot more quickly and accurately and save them time by writing a few lines of code, they'd be more likely to code later in life.
And I think one good way to achieve that is to give them a project that's relevant to their interests and have them work their way to a solution.
When I was in grade school I remember this really annoying class, they made us w
Here is the thing with "full stack" (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get why the notion of "full stack developer" is such a big deal. I mean, do people go to build a home and say, "I want an 'all trades craftsman'."? Or do people go looking for a doctor and say, "I want an 'all specialties surgeon'."?
Of course not. Certainly there are people in every skilled profession who could be classified as generalists. They can probably handle most small things that are not very highly specialized and, if they are good at their profession, they know when something is outside of their skillset and can provide a link to a specialist that can handle it.
I am not saying that we should make technology and programming more difficult than they need to be. But, let's face it, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge, skill, and experience one must acquire in order to be a good programmer. It is very difficult to acquire all of that for what would qualify as "full stack."
I think it was Stroustrup (or maybe Dijkstra), speaking on the idea of making programming "easier" so more people could be programmers with far less training and education, who said something to the effect of "I wouldn't want a surgeon operating on me who only had 6 weeks of training."
Re:Here is the thing with "full stack" (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get why the notion of "full stack developer" is such a big deal. I mean, do people go to build a home and say, "I want an 'all trades craftsman'."? Or do people go looking for a doctor and say, "I want an 'all specialties surgeon'."?
I want someone to be in charge of building my house that understand enough about wood, concrete and plumbing to safely fuse the different work, without it falling apart next year.
And when I have surgery on my foot, and the surgeon spots a rupturing blood vessel, I want him to be able to deal and not have to put me on ice while attempting to find someone who knows something about veins.
A strong base with branching out into special areas is what I want to see. Not specialists who have no fundamental knowledge, unskilled labor who fall apart when instructions don't match reality, nor generalists that are so general that they can't actually do anything.
Re:Here is the thing with "full stack" (Score:5, Insightful)
I want someone to be in charge of building my house that understand enough about wood, concrete and plumbing to safely fuse the different work, without it falling apart next year.
That person is called a general contractor, the construction equivalent of a project manager. Of course, you don't expect that person to set the roof trusses one day, run the electrical the next day, and then figure out why the main train to the setpic tank backed up the following day. Yet, that is the equivalent of what is expected of "full stack developers."
And when I have surgery on my foot, and the surgeon spots a rupturing blood vessel, I want him to be able to deal and not have to put me on ice while attempting to find someone who knows something about veins.
I think the ability of the surgeon to deal with depends on a variety of factors. In some cases it might be likely that the surgeon could handle it on the spot, like if the surgeon is a vascular surgeon, and in other cases it might be less likely the surgeon could handle it on the spot. In any event, I would expect surgeons to have at least basic training in recognizing and even to a certain extent dealing with situations that might arise in the normal course of their work.
A strong base with branching out into special areas is what I want to see. Not specialists who have no fundamental knowledge, unskilled labor who fall apart when instructions don't match reality, nor generalists that are so general that they can't actually do anything.
I think I did not communicate myself well. The "full stack developer" postings I see and positions I hear people talk about are roughly the equivalent of "must be master-level skill in UI, back-end, algorithm performance, architecture design, (and so on for half a dozen other areas of expertise), must have 10+ years experience in each of those areas, and we will pay $50-75k". That sort of thing is just unrealistic. A good programmer I think can be expected to be really good at one major area of development for every ~10 years as a professional programmer, so to find someone that has excellent skills in three major areas would require 30 years programming experience. That is not at all the expectation of anyone I have heard of go looking for a "full stack developer".
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One thing is that it really depends on the complexity of what you are setting out to do. All too often a business assumes *any* software is as complex as building a skyscraper, and overthinks things.
Another is that in my experience, a lot of companies will declare someone a 'project manager' who has no particular understanding of any of it. When I speak to a general contractor, they may not be 100% able to do everything, but they will know enough to actually provide valid feedback and assessments.
The prob
Re:Here is the thing with "full stack" (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree on the 'full stack' craze, I also rail against the common mantra that you should use whatever programming language is best designed for the particular task... I tend to stick to the languages I know well rather than jump around. I know that I will probably suck if I switch languages outside the 2 or 3 I already know...
Even the best programmers make a litany of errors each day, any surgeon who had the mistake rate of a rockstar programmer would be struck off immediately. We think we're so good, but computer science is so far behind every other profession.
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Agree on the 'full stack' craze, I also rail against the common mantra that you should use whatever programming language is best designed for the particular task... I tend to stick to the languages I know well rather than jump around. I know that I will probably suck if I switch languages outside the 2 or 3 I already know...
When I was fresh out of school, I would choose languages/technologies like this:
These days, some number of years later, I do something like this:
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We also knew more than one programming language in the past and used them regularly. Ie, the program is in C, the data is preprocessed in Perl, the mockup is in Lisp, and the build system is a web of shell scripts.
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So my company has manufacturing, hardware, firmware, and software. Software is split into the parts that are important and must work from the parts that are fluffier. I do see a distinct type of skill sets in each of those areas, even though all of them involve some form of software.
I think it's when you get to web based applications that the distinctions between areas of the product become fuzzier and then there's a desire for "full stack" programmers because they're more fungible and you can shift them a
The problem never went away. It is simple... (Score:2)
Programmers and Program Designers still do not understand the objectives or how the âoereal worldâ works. Meaning that they donâ(TM)t get the problem and donâ(TM)t have any idea what a proper solution might look like. Which explains handily the opening assertion.
Re:The problem never went away. It is simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's everyone's fault really.
I've dealt with programmers who never have and never want to talk to the users of the software they produce. It's just too scary, that's what the support, sales, and marketing people do. If they are needed, then those folks will make bullet points and disseminate to the 'architects' who will task the 'leads' to direct the 'programmers'. There is no way this can lead to good result. Yet this is a common perception of how to manage commercial software development.
Sounds good, but (Score:2)
Not "how to fix it" (Score:3, Informative)
He states the problem. He says it should be better. He doesn't go into "how".
The fix should be to have software write the code. Input the behavior you want in any programming language — maybe a new one, but old ones to start with.
Then the software translates it into whatever other language, replaces the easy to understand loops and such with efficient implementations that provide the same result and are provably secure, identifies sequence points, breaks it all up into parrallelizable nuggets, and sends the whole thing to a scheduler that runs it on a set of CPUs.
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in which case we've already been fixing it for decades... they are called assemblers and compilers.
Yes, but those are first and second level sorts of enabling tools. Beyond that you have the Java and JavaScript JIT compilers which do substantially more. But they are limited because they have to be efficient — they need to execute code in less time counting the overhead of the JIT compiler. What could they do if they had 1000x the time to pre-optimize the implementation?
And that’s the runtime and compile time part. The actual code-writing part is what needs more effort. Why do we still n
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The PROBLEM is expressing "Input the behavior you want" in mathematical terms.
Without that preciseness, there is too many variations... and you can't dictate "do what I mean" when you can't express what that means.
Sure you can. Say "do basically this" and have the software guess the rest. Create tests that tell the software whether it guessed right or it needs to keep guessing. When that fails, give it a more precise instruction.
We are already at the extreme of software not really helping here. Any improvement would be better.
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Easier said than done.
Basically creating those 'tests' is going to be programming... again... And you could instead... just program...
The whole 'software guesses randomly' works in some very useful, but very narrow problem sets.
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You should have software helping your engineer.
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I currently have an engineer fresh out of college working on making the above for loop actually work. I described it to him and he told me he could get it done in a day or two. That was two weeks ago. Because it turns out, it's a hell of a lot harder than that. Every time he comes to me and tells me he is done, I ask him "what about this edge case?" or "did you check that x is getting set correctly?" or "what if then inputs comes in like this?". And he goes back to his desk to continue trudging through every which way that one simple for loop that is easily described by a three sentence task order can go wrong.
Also, why don’t you have your engineer writing tests for his implementation first? Then he can understand the entire problem domain, then he can write his code to pass the tests. Then he can run regressions when he makes changes. Get the tests right, get the implementation right.
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Whether he is writing the code or writing the tests the same description generally applies... The inexperienced developer doesn't understand everything that was asked and a lot of what could go wrong. One could say he should have conveyed the whole thing up front, but practically speaking humans don't think of everything up front, and only recall or conceive of things when faced with an iteration. You realize as you go that situations crop up, or the original design was ill-conceived.
This is an area where
The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
... people don't want to learn. No doubt tools can always be better but knowing how to improve them is a non trivial undertaking. They want easier to use tools but those "easy to use tools" take decades of research and development to make. If good tools were so easy to make they would already exist.
Computers programs are only as good as the coneptual and modelling approach you use. Consider many 2D videogames who render spries as largely square/rectangle block, if you want two sprites to do something complex like melt into one another, that would require 1) faking it or 2) coming up with an entirely new way to model and animate sprites that broke them down into individual pixels/atomic components.
The problem with computers for normal people, is that computers force you to specify and make clear your thoughts and most peoples thoughts are hopelessly vague. That's why people are frustrated they simply do not know nor understand the complexity of the work they are asking when the want some problem "they think is easy" to be be rigorously quantified before you can code up a solution in a program.
Huh? Programming got harder? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like he is looking at the languages and tool chains used in the enterprise, and complaining that they are not suitable to get Joe Sixpack programming, while ignoring all the incredibly easy ways for somebody to make something useful at home. And, I'm sorry to say it, but the most obvious counter-example to what he is saying is... Python.
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Python rocks.
It has allowed me to forget about the abomination that is C++.
C for everything else.
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I'm sorry to say it, but the most obvious counter-example to what he is saying is... Python.
Literally the first time I tried to use Python to do anything useful I C&P'd a code sample from a website and the browser destroyed the formatting. Even BASIC wouldn't do that.
The mention of Hypercard does make me wonder, is there any free modern equivalent? There are of course commercial equivalents, and Filemaker springs immediately to mind. Once you know a little about programming (which is about how much I know) you can use Drupal in basically the same way. I was able to make a tool which interprete
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He seems a lot smarter than I am and so I do not want to dismiss what he is saying... but I cannot possibly see how programming is harder than it used to be.
Well, he seems to be conflating programming syntax with standard libraries, since he's talking about a hundred thousand pages. Like for example I looked at the Swift language reference and it's 676 pages long and that covers every bit of grammar in great detail. And even that is confusing the part that complex programming languages are there to make programming simple. A Turing machine is ridiculously simple, read the tape symbol, write new symbol, go to new state, move left/right on tape. It's also horribl
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There's a phenomenon where you forget how to be 'satisfied' with easy programming. When you start out, you don't know how to do much, but what you can do seems easy. As you acquire experience you become able to do so much more than you ever thought you could.
Then one day years on you take a step back at how you do things and think 'man, this is much more complicated than when I started out'. What you fail to do, however, is try to use those simplistic approaches to solve a problem that you are now used t
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One problem I think he is seeing is that different technologies get introduced that sol
Yeah, no. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the 80s anymore. Useful systems are complex, have many layers, and tend to grow new layers over time.
In the 90s, a web page was a static .html file. Some minimum understanding was enough to make one.
Later, CGIs were added. Now you need some understanding of HTTP.
Add a database. Now you need to understand SQL, and related matters, like SQL injection.
Add JavaScript. A whole new language to deal with.
Add dynamic content. Suddenly, the page isn't a static thing, there's a DOM that's being modified in real time.
Add a growing internet, with many users of your page. Now you need to know how to make a scalable system, and how to design a proper database.
Add cloud computing, where the underlying infrastructure itself can be scaled in real time, and where you can get extra database servers if you need them for a couple hours.
Add internationalization, and now the programmer has to be aware of Unicode, different date formats and so on.
With each added feature and with each added layer the complexity grows. And you can't just throw your hands up and say "fuck this, let's do it like we did in the 90s", because all those things were added for a reason. Without Unicode, you have problems with your international clients. Without dynamic content your page is clunky and slow compared to the competition. Without planning for scalability, your infrastructure falls down right when your business is on the front page of Reddit.
I get the nostalgia for the good old and simple times, but that never lasts. As soon as a new tech emerges, people build on top of it, and then on top of that, and so on, and things escalate until it's hard for a single person to deal with all of it anymore.
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The point you make is a very valid one, but (on the basis of the summary) I'm not sure that you're necessarily in disagreement with the OP. Making a dynamic website requires you to understand a lot of layers, but there are useful systems which are very simple. Sometimes you just need to munge some data, and a skilled Perl user could do it in one line and no more than five minutes. Far more people have problems on that scale than need to make large websites, but most of them will do the data munging by hand
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That is dangerous in this day and age. Where does this data you need to munge come from? Where does it go to? How does your tool manipulate that data exactly? This munging is going to be one of the layers inside some kind of system, so you still need to consider how it fits into it.
And then we have to consider other issues, like: does Perl even fit well into this system? Are you causing scalability issues by executing an external command? Are you creating a security problem or a bug by passing commandline a
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STOP throwing out successful ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to disagree. The necessary CRUD, GUI, and relational idioms to do the job of typical business applications are mostly the same as the 80's. The web and silly fads came in and mucked it up, turning bicycle science into rocket science by pounding a square peg into a round hole.
Nobody seems interested in exploring and developing new standards to make CRUD and productivity applications easier again. The arcane fidgety nature of the state of the art is too much job security: simplification may trigger an IT bust.
For example, the Oracle Forms developers at our shop can crank out applications at about 1/7 the pace of the "web" oriented developers. The result is not aesthetic, but they work and get the job done. (Oracle is a jerk in other ways, but Forms just works.)
But our shop has to migrate away from Oracle Forms because Oracle stopped making a Forms client and converted it to Java. Java doesn't get along with our security infrastructure. Flash and Java made the same mistake of making their client into do-all behemoth, which resulted in security holes. If they or the industry had focused on making just a "GUI browser" (hopefully with an open standard), we could toss HTML browsers for productivity applications. HTML browsers are better for e-brochures, and not eCRUD.
So, if you want to fix it, learn from past products that work, and produce a stateful "GUI Browser" standard. Let's go back to coordinate based clients instead of client-size auto-flow placement. The server side can resize for the client size as needed. That way we have one placement engine instead of the 50+ placement engines we have now (browser brands & versions). Client-side layout sucks big productivity donkey dicks. (This is not the same as proposing only WYSIWYG as some critics have claimed, because the server can still do auto-flow if desired.)
Put on the client just enough to get the client job done, shifting the rest to the server, but otherwise learn from the failure Java applets and Flash and don't make the client into a do-everything monstrosity. (Resisting Emacs jokes.)
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Nobody seems interested in exploring and developing new standards to make CRUD and productivity applications easier again.
Some people do... [vpri.org]
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Note that you don't *need* to have a database, server side execution, javascript assembled DOM, and such.
I do that in some cases.
There is however a documentation site I am responsible for that is just HTML and CSS. People originally said 'oh, it's going to have to be some complex CMS' but we went a different direction. Designers can play with the css and our technical writers just edit text and a build system kicks off to produce HTML and CSS and put to the site.
As a result, much less surface for attacks
anyone can do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone can program.
Hell when I started I could crank code like it was nothing. But guess what. That code was total crap. I mean it was *very* *very* *very* badly written.
Once I learned a good amount of CS I became much better. I did not make terrible memory mistakes. Big 'oh' is a thing and it matters at all levels memory, cycles, instructions, time, etc. It maters it takes a decent math foundation to understand it.
Once I got the CS degree I still was fairly 'mediocre' at it. At least my code was not terrible. It was not exactly great either. That has take years of practice and time. Tooling around it has helped pick off the silly 'typo' mistakes. But not all. Also more practice. This is an art. We are craftsman. We can use science and math to build our art. But art it is. Once you realize that you can figure out how to make CS great again.
One of the biggest lessons is. Do not worry about 'stacks'. HR worries about them because the managers think they need to worry about them. What you want is well rounded individuals who can grok the idea of how the stack you are using works and is not an ass to work with.
We have ended up with giant sweeping stacks that no one person can understand because of 'crunch'. Everyone in the industry wears it like a badge 'I work X hours per week'. That sort of work ethic create crap. You are not stopping and using the the thing holding your ears apart on how people will use your 'latest greatest API which is trending #1 on stackoverflow'.
Leaky abstractions are dead easy to make. Ones that 'just work'. Those are hard to make. I am currently in the process of picking up spring. What an un-holy mess of a stack. Oh you can do great things fairly quickly. But the one thing everyone bitches about is 'how do I debug this bitch with its 200 line stack traces'. That is one of the 'popular' ones! So everyone is floundering around trying different stacks and transpilers to spackle over the defects of a poor language choice in our browsers. We are also winding up to create the worlds largest lockin of code ever with webassembly. Then deriding our languages for the 'bad' things that are going on (hell I just did it). So we invent 3 more that do pretty much the same mistakes eventually.
So yeah CS/Programming is hard. Because we are too busy trying to be the next vendor lockin and putting in way too many hours on stacks that just do not help get shit done. But hey at least I am trending and have a banging blog and youtube video series that no one gives a crap about!
You can't get around the time investment (Score:5, Informative)
You might as well suggest that people could master painting or mechanical engineering or something without putting in a time investment.
I'm all for getting more people to code. I'm all for an introductory language for new coders.
But when it comes to the big league heavy lifting coding, it is going to be complicated because it is complicated.
It isn't complicated because some "nerds" made it complicated. It was complicated before anyone coded at all. It is inherently complicated.
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Re:You can't get around the time investment (Score:5, Interesting)
On one hand, you're entirely correct.
On the other hand, why isn't there some Lego-like programming environment that wraps up complicated functionality in lick-and-stick modules, for those cases which are simple? Where you plop down modules, and drag outputs to inputs? So what if it only handled the majority of what noobs want to do, wouldn't that be enough to be useful?
There have been numerous programming environments which take all the programming out of programming, at least for simple tasks. A user could get a lot out of Hypercard without writing any code, even making use of binary plugin blobs in some cases. Unfortunately, I feel much of what killed Hypercard due to disuse by the masses was the everyone-must-pay mentality in Mac-land. Much of what got me to give up using Macs is the high percentage of simple tools whose Linux or even Windows analogue is free, but which cost money on Macintosh — and not a dollar or two, either, but often tens of dollars for really very primitive functionality. If you wanted to do e.g. some simple serial port call and response in a Hypercard stack, you had to pay for that functionality, probably because the development tools were not only nonfree but actually expensive. It's a bit more confusing today, when Xcode costs nothing.
Another example of programming taken out of programming is found in the various game creation kits, like SEUCK or any of the many text adventure builders — the latter more than the former, of course.
With the full understanding that doing anything the software wasn't designed to do is going to require coding or at least scripting, why isn't there a drag-and-drop programming environment worth using by now?
Not sure author has thought things out (Score:2)
The problem with saying "we need to make ???? easier so that everybody can use it" is that you need highly technical people to make ???? easier for everybody else. I see Javascript as being an example of this mindset. It was created to make it possible for basic programmers to create intelligent web pages - for teaching basic programming and implementing simple functions (like convert inches to centimetres) it's pretty good. But, choices made to keep things simple resulted in the language becoming incred
Don't dumb down programming, make people smarter (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading the article, I feel like the solution is adding meaningful instruction in programming at grade school and continuing it through a person's education. From here, programming platforms for the masses will become obvious and well supported.
Sometimes when the common denominator is too low, you have to change it rather than cater to it.
They requirements have increased a thousand fold (Score:2)
Users demand more sophistication than the 80x40 character-based applications I first wrote starting out. Back then, I could churn out a working departmental application inside of a week, including data tables, using a 4GL.
Who wants to go back to those days? Now we have internet instead of LANs, GUI, events, threads, all sorts of data stores, and layers of abstraction to manage it all. I don't see it getting any simpler.
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They=> The
ugh. can't edit in /.
Visual Basic and Excel For All (Score:2)
let's try that with something else (Score:2, Interesting)
There, fixed that for you.
Seems like today's web environment, no? (Score:2)
Bingo!
And that complexity makes it nigh upon impossible for any one person to understand everything about how their site works. (Well, I guess, unless you're a rock star.) Even then, though, you see job ads with a laundry list of "must haves", "should haves", etc. as though any one person could have
Need imagination re user capabilities, interaction (Score:2)
The line between using a computer and programming one used to be thinner. HyperCard and spreadsheets are great examples of how people brought programming to the masses. (Visual Basic, I'm not so sure of.) Shells of all kinds and other environments like MATLAB did some of the same things. Macro languages in programs like WordPerfect likewise empowered the user and lowered the barrier to entry.
My favorite example is RPL on HP 28/48 calculators. It took a little doing to learn how to use a postfix calculator,
The Peter Principle (Score:2)
Every time someone does that, their "simple" tools end up being used for problems far more large and complex than they were designed for, and we get a godawful mess. Think shell programming, Perl, PHP, Excel, etc. (Spreasheets have been used to produce the most opaque, incomprehensible modeling code I've ever encountered.) It's the Peter Pri [wikipedia.org]
FoxPro on DOS (Score:2)
> It is long past time to return to designing tools not just for rock stars at Google but the vast majority of programmers and laypeople with simple small-scale problems,"
FoxPro on DOS fits that.
Meh. (Score:2)
People have been saying "programming should be easier" forever.
Many have tried, all have failed.
And the task keeps getting bigger because the uses and requirements keep expanding. From one simple input (keyboard) from one source (user) to a variable domain of many complex inputs from many sources. From one simple output (answer) to a variable domain of many complex outputs to many destinations. And the core tasks, too, aside from input and output, are far more complex than they were.
If you have one hex nut
Historically grown. (Score:2)
That's what all plattforms are.
To emphasise: Today we do applications in a webbrowser and the avantgarde is done in a scripting language of which - if you had said it would rule the world 20 years ago - people would've stuck you in the l00ny-bin.
The biggest remaining problem today is that visual stuff (builders, modellers, DMIs etc.) is still 10 years behind what used to be the epitome of DMIs (direct manipulation interface ... look it up) called Flash. That was a prorpietary technology and had a shitty her
Amiga CanDo (Score:3)
He mentioned Hypercard. I'd say, bring back something like the CanDo programming environment that we used to have on Amiga.
Re: https://randocity.com/2018/03/... [randocity.com]
This was amazingly accessible, like BASIC if you had a BASIC where everything was created visually with a GUI—which is very different from having a visual GUI editor as some kind of mere accessory sidecar. Rather than create your code in one IDE, and a GUI in another, and then try to graft them together (like IB on the Mac), CanDo had you create your GUI which you could then embed code objects into. Your bits of code were simply properties of GUI objects, although it was also possible to have dedicated code-holding objects with no visual presence. It wasn't perfect, because large projects could become disorganized, but for relatively smaller stuff it was brilliant.
So why didn't it get traction; why didn't it take over the world? For one, CanDo was an Amiga thing, and therefore unknown to most of the world. For another, it came out exactly at the time when the internet was taking off, and the rest of the world was going gaga over HTML and Java, while CanDo had no concept of network connectivity.
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Not at all. You can pretty much use any modern language for any problem, but some are better at some tasks than others. Some are also more intuitive, easier to read and elegant, and often those things are sacrificed for the sake of flexibility. I think the person is trying to say that we can have both. For example (from the article) spreadsheets written in BASIC that were both easy to program with low barriers to entry, and powerful as well.
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Freebasic is quite darn quick, sometimes even beating stuff like java, but mostly because it is a C compiler in disguise.
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Say you have a BASIC compiler that uses the same back end as a C# compiler. What would make BASIC code any slower than C# code?
(In fact, we do. It's called VB.NET.)
Re:Idiocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I misread/misunderstood this article but I read this as, 'let's dumb down computer programming".
Yes! Good! We need to get over this god-complex if we're ever going to sort out our profession. Programming *needs* to be easier, you can't just continually hire super-intelligent people because there just aren't enough of them. And even when you do, they still produce poor bug-ridden code, because the task is just too hard.
The level of complexity in computing is all but impossible for any reasonable human to handle. A really big portion of my days is spent finding things in other people's code (ie mainstream libraries) that don't work as they should, and god knows what mistakes I am personally putting out into the world. If big players (eg this week I found horrible problems with Google & Dropbox code) can't provide consistently working libraries what hope do the rest of us have, with tight deadlines and limited intelligence.
Every other profession, medicine, law, accountancy, engineering, have to deal with the fact that not everyone is a genius, and have systems and checks in-place that means people don't have to be flawless to work in them. Until computing is the same, it will remain a wild-west hobby. Programmers need to get over their pride.
Surgery for everyone! (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone must be a surgeon.
Not those rare few uppity elites who can afford the education.
It's discrimination I say!
We need to change how the human body operates to make it easier for more people to work on.
Re:Surgery for everyone! (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone must be a surgeon.
Not those rare few uppity elites who can afford the education.
It's discrimination I say!
We need to change how the human body operates to make it easier for more people to work on.
Like I said - god complex.
You are not a surgeon. Also, we need waaaaaay more programmers than surgeons.
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You don't need to be super-intelligent to program effectively. You just need to be able to think logically and break down tasks. It doesn't need to be made easier, because if you can't do those two things you shouldn't be programming.
If it were that easy then we wouldn't be in the horrendous situation we are in now. Just go read the issues lists of major software - you don't have to believe me, the state of the profession is plain to see.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Time to get more of the super-intelligent.
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Every other profession, medicine, law, accountancy, engineering, have to deal with the fact that not everyone is a genius, and have systems and checks in-place that means people don't have to be flawless to work in them. Until computing is the same, it will remain a wild-west hobby. Programmers need to get over their pride.
I have no idea about accountancy and engineering, but in terms of medicine and law, they deal with the issue by requiring 10x as much training as everyone else, and it's brutal stuff. You don't have to be a genius, but you do have to clear some fairly high thresholds on being able to retain and apply knowledge. I'm not even really comfortable classing those with software engineering in these areas.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Medics have it easy. Sure, the human body is a complex system, but
- it's A complex system, not many
- outcomes are pretty straightforward : Alive, healed
- no innovation required (if illness A, issue medication B)
- limited scope
That last one is massive. Lets take security. Medics don't have to protect their systems against intrusion attempts, malicious attacks, user ignorance, data loss or unsafe use.
A full stack engineer is like a medic that has to diagnose, dispense the right medicines, assure they're taken correctly, hire bodyguards for the patient, wrap them in cotton wool, prevent them from burning themselves while cooking and actively preventing them from climbing up steep mountains. They also have to do all their cooking, change their nappies, take the blame if they get pregnant, raise the child, and issue comprehensive documentation on how to dress each day.
You're absolutely right, other professions get by with a good memory. Lucky sods.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the most important difference - they don't bring out a new version every five months.
Doc: Shit, he's got a 3.1.05 heart!
Paramedic: Don't you know it?
Doc: No, we only covered the 1 series at med school. I did a refresher a while back, but that was only up to 2.6.
Nurse: [handing him a laptop] I already opened Google for you.
(Under her breath) I hope your typing's better than your handwriting.
Re: Idiocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I like that it's wild west because, at the end of the day, merit still counts. You sound like some phb who thinks engineering is factory work. It's not.
I mean - I enjoy the wild-west nature. I just know it can't continue.
Until we have worked out how to build software in the same way an architect designs a building, where it can be proven to be strong enough to withstand the forces against it, we'll be in trouble.
Re: Idiocracy (Score:4, Interesting)
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I am *amazed* at how many words you used to say basically nothing.
One thing you certainly didn't accomplish in your post was the formulation of a cogent counter-argument to the statement "The problem is that the problems that need solving are HARD." You opened by stating you disagreed, which suggests that you were going to demonstrate how the statement was wrong. But instead you just rambled aimlessly, making a heaping mass of independent statements that did not connect to one another in any meaningful wa
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a middle manager who doesn't really understand anything but wants it to be cheaper/easier so he doesn't have to pay PhD wages
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Re: Idiocracy (Score:3)
This can all be done without tools as nothing stops a person from writing their code in a simple text editor and testing it by running the prog
Re:Idiocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
"'let's dumb down computer programming".
What's wrong with that? The trick would be HOW to dumb down computer programming without ending up with an intractable shambles like the last 50000 attempts to do so.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:5, Informative)
Lay people, especially managers, like to think "if we just used library X" that could take care of all the hard stuff. The reality is, using library X now becomes the hard part. It could be bugs, performance problems, bad behavior for certain edge cases, incompatible API changes or security problems. In many cases it could be worse to work across an abstraction layer like that, since the business-destroying bug you're running into is just one of thousands that the upstream developer has to deal with.
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Not everyone is suited for every job out there and there's genuinely no shame in admitting a particular job just isn't for you.
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Actually, there's some bits that require dumbing down.
QBasic was as simple as "Screen 13", followed by "Pset (1,1),43", plus there's other quick graphics functions available. This is as simple as it gets.
In C for MS-DOS, you could do simple graphics rather quickly. Maybe you needed a library for C in order to quickly produce graphics, but you're still only one step away from drawing whatever picture is desired. You may need a library, but any proper compiler would have
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It's already dumbed down. "Rockstars" such a ridiculous ego driven word, usually program only by gluing together preexisting components. So their primary skill is memorizing the every changing APIs which seems to impress some people, rather than knowing how to program something from scratch. These rockstars more often than not don't have a solid foundation in data structures or algorithms and they don't care as those things don't matter for what they're doing.
Re:Idiocracy (Score:4, Informative)
"To wit, they will not use pre-existing code, because it couldn't POSSIBLY compare with their own brilliant code."
Right road, but wrong driveway I think. It's often easier to solve a complex problem yourself than to understand how to use someone else's solution even when their solution is perfectly valid. Throw in the number of times when their solution is flawed or is the solution to some other similar, but not identical problem (now you have two problems) and there is often some justification for being leary of at least some pre-existing code.
Your desktop vs the internet (Score:4, Informative)
Something in the style Hypercard or OS macfos, or Excel macros can be very helpful to partially automate your job. Rather than clicking the same thing over and over, you can script your task. That doesn't always require a lot of expertise.
Contrast that with code exposed on the internet, which potentially connects to your company's critical databases. Being on the web, that code will be attacked hundreds or thousands of times per day. Sometimes, attacked by very skilled attackers. These are two VERY different situations.
On your desktop, sure go ahead and script autoreplies to common emails. For code on web, being attacked thousands and thousands of times, which can result in multi-million dollar losses, that's best done by someone who really knows what they are doing.
That does NOT mean a "professional programmer" who was hired as a programmer because he "knows a lot about computers". That means someone who has actually studied how to architect and author secure systems to be robust while under attack, and continues to study. Twenty years into my career, I still study several hours per week, because the black hat hackers keep learning new ways to attack us.
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Google used to have really talented people. Unfortunately a mix of Peter Principle and encroaching red tape (aka corporate talent rot) eventually caught up to them.
Where cross site scripting, XHR, etc come from (Score:4, Insightful)
> There are so many javascript web frameworks that let incredibly poor programmers produce useful tools. They may be horridly inefficient and buggy but they work.
Yes, they seem to pretty much work, when they receive the expected inputs. Since the person who wrote it doesn't know what they're doing, inputs they didn't anticipate result in yet another $20 million breach.
There is a place for something like Hypercard, macros, etc - on your own desktop, to make your job easier. Programming that's going to be exposed to hundreds or thousands of attacks per day, programming on the web, needs to be done right.
"Done right" doesn't just mean "a professional", an English major given the title "Programmer". It means someone who actually knows what they are doing.
Re:Visual Basic? (Score:4, Interesting)
Borland Delphi (and later, C++ Builder, maybe) were great examples of how components could be visualized, packaged, and used for development.
It's really a shame nobody has pushed this direction. It worked really, really well.
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and, oddly, it's the capitalists who are always trying to answer this admittedly stupid question with equally stupid (but profitable) solutions.
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Did you actually read the article? He proposes the programming equivalent of "trade school" education - which was pretty common 30-40 years ago.
On the other hand, he complained that nobody is going back and rewriting legacy code, just layering on top of it (that's the context for the "100k lines of documentation" comment). I understand his concerns, but this is as unattainable as expecting politicians to review and rewrite all the old laws. The vast majority of organizations can't afford the resources nece
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Tons of programming languages, libraries, tools, etc, etc. Some are easier than others save when you have a problem they aren't suited for. There is no such thing as one size fits all programming, and I'm pretty sure never will be.
many of those libraries are driven by ego. others are driven by unintelligible code bases that make it easier to create another unintelligible code base than modify the existing unintelligible code base.