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Immediate feedback is extremely valuable. This is presented and explained better than I could by Bret Victor's "inventing on principle" talk. We need to get p

by Peaker 11y ago

Immediate feedback is extremely valuable. This is presented and explained better than I could by Bret Victor's "inventing on principle" talk. We need to get programming out of the "blindly manipulating symbols" phase.

justin_vanw 11y ago
If you are blindly manipulating symbols you are not good at it, this is not everyone.
- yairchu 11y ago
  I think that you and Peaker are merely interpreting the term "blindly manipulating symbols" differently. Here's an explanation of what the term means: http://blog.absentdesign.com/2013/05/blindly-manipulating-symbols/ http://blog.absentdesign.com/2013/05/blindly-manipulating-sy...
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    So I read that page, and I think the explanation is even worse than what I interpreted it to be the first time. What they call 'blindly manipulating symbols' I call 'automation'. That is the entire point of computers in the first place, to very quickly perform tasks so that a human doesn't have to. That means describing the solution to those tasks. This is no different than mathematicians using equations. We don't need to do the entire process of solving every problem if they are the same except for changes in some parameters, we can write an equation and plug the parameters in. In software, we can write an algorithm/program that solves some specific problem, so long as the solution is the same and only the inputs are changing. Since programming languages support branching, we can make these algorithms as general as we think is useful.
    - Peaker 11y ago
      You misunderstand. Perhaps watch the "inventing on principle" talk (which is an awesome talk, you won't regret it)?
- Peaker 11y ago
  Do you believe the ux of a spreadsheet used as a program is the same as the ux of writing a similar program textually? Lamdu is partially about bringing the benefits of spreadsheets to general purpose programming.

by Peaker 11y ago

justin_vanw 11y ago

If you are blindly manipulating symbols you are not good at it, this is not everyone.

yairchu 11y ago
I think that you and Peaker are merely interpreting the term "blindly manipulating symbols" differently. Here's an explanation of what the term means: http://blog.absentdesign.com/2013/05/blindly-manipulating-symbols/ http://blog.absentdesign.com/2013/05/blindly-manipulating-sy...
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  So I read that page, and I think the explanation is even worse than what I interpreted it to be the first time. What they call 'blindly manipulating symbols' I call 'automation'. That is the entire point of computers in the first place, to very quickly perform tasks so that a human doesn't have to. That means describing the solution to those tasks. This is no different than mathematicians using equations. We don't need to do the entire process of solving every problem if they are the same except for changes in some parameters, we can write an equation and plug the parameters in. In software, we can write an algorithm/program that solves some specific problem, so long as the solution is the same and only the inputs are changing. Since programming languages support branching, we can make these algorithms as general as we think is useful.
  - Peaker 11y ago
    You misunderstand. Perhaps watch the "inventing on principle" talk (which is an awesome talk, you won't regret it)?
Peaker 11y ago
Do you believe the ux of a spreadsheet used as a program is the same as the ux of writing a similar program textually? Lamdu is partially about bringing the benefits of spreadsheets to general purpose programming.