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I don't think this is a matter of making programming easier for people who are not interested in programming - I look at this as a study of how "normal" program

by Splines 10y ago

I don't think this is a matter of making programming easier for people who are not interested in programming - I look at this as a study of how "normal" programming could be made to model how the human mind might think naturally. Non-programmers often need to "program". For example, consider writing email filtering rules. The wording and flow could be improved with the learnings from this study. "Apply this label to this mail and all the ones like it, then archive all of those mails".

bordercases 10y ago
You would be surprised how much you can get away with by learning to work with the machine directly. The way that the human mind works without training is naturally ambiguous and chaotic. There are of course benefits to offloading some of the thinking and parsing to the compiler or interpreter whatever; that's why we have Python, because C and Assembly weren't enough. But human beings have been inventing formal notations because they end up being the right tool for the job, most of the time, to guide thought, even if the upstart cost of using them takes some work. I suspect that being afraid of formality will gradually make you lose power over the computer, and will cause unpredictable results when it isn't crystal clear where the impedance to communication and understanding with the machine lies. I'm all for the more declarative style of programming though, even if it doesn't resemble any particular natural language specifically (remember that papers like these still have a grand Anglo bias in their implementations – imagine the sparsity of a Chinese version of these studies, and the potential difference of the results!).
capote 10y ago
They need to "program," not program. The difference is key—people who can't write email rules just aren't "computer savvy" and that's not such a large issue with the new generations. What seems to be happening is people trying to figure out how to make teaching programming easier—like the guy below who works as a TA. I wasn't a TA but I did help a lot of people in school with programming and other CS assignments, and I definitely noticed lots of people in the field for the wrong reason. Either because they thought they could make a lot of money or because their parents wanted them to do it—but they had no natural interest or talent and didn't understand anything. Some of them declared many times they "hate" math or science. Why do we have to go out of our way to teach people like this computer science principles or programming? They aren't interested in it and don't think the right way. There are many other professions and schools out there, surely most people can find what they really are cut out for, right?

by Splines 10y ago

bordercases 10y ago

You would be surprised how much you can get away with by learning to work with the machine directly. The way that the human mind works without training is naturally ambiguous and chaotic. There are of course benefits to offloading some of the thinking and parsing to the compiler or interpreter whatever; that's why we have Python, because C and Assembly weren't enough. But human beings have been inventing formal notations because they end up being the right tool for the job, most of the time, to guide thought, even if the upstart cost of using them takes some work. I suspect that being afraid of formality will gradually make you lose power over the computer, and will cause unpredictable results when it isn't crystal clear where the impedance to communication and understanding with the machine lies. I'm all for the more declarative style of programming though, even if it doesn't resemble any particular natural language specifically (remember that papers like these still have a grand Anglo bias in their implementations – imagine the sparsity of a Chinese version of these studies, and the potential difference of the results!).

capote 10y ago

They need to "program," not program. The difference is key—people who can't write email rules just aren't "computer savvy" and that's not such a large issue with the new generations. What seems to be happening is people trying to figure out how to make teaching programming easier—like the guy below who works as a TA. I wasn't a TA but I did help a lot of people in school with programming and other CS assignments, and I definitely noticed lots of people in the field for the wrong reason. Either because they thought they could make a lot of money or because their parents wanted them to do it—but they had no natural interest or talent and didn't understand anything. Some of them declared many times they "hate" math or science. Why do we have to go out of our way to teach people like this computer science principles or programming? They aren't interested in it and don't think the right way. There are many other professions and schools out there, surely most people can find what they really are cut out for, right?