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I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget. Are small business accountants

by gdp 16y ago

I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget. Are small business accountants "artists"? Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science. However, I think that is a much better position to aspire to than self-aggrandizement and glorifying a skill that is really no different than any other skill that any suitably motivated 12 year can acquire with a couple library books and an internet connection. With a science of programming, we can aspire to a position where programmers can at least claim to be engineers, and at least have good odds of most programming projects resulting in software of reasonable quality. Face it, there's good art and bad art, and it's subjective which is which. Programs have objective measures we can apply, depending on what the code is used for - developer time, performance, correctness... and a million others. We can argue about which measures are the right ones to use, but at least these measures exist. We can (with current technology) empirically evaluate a piece of code in many different ways. Actually starting to apply this kind of empirical evaluation is the first step towards programming being a science. [Edit: OK, so the parent to this was heavily edited after I posted this, but I can't be bothered rewriting this accordingly, so please excuse any incongruence between this reply and the post it is replying to]

antirez 16y ago
> With a science of programming, we can aspire to a position where programmers can at least claim to be engineers. This is not a good aspiration I think. Engineers can be replaced with not huge efforts, while you can't easily replace artists. Also this vision will lead to more bad programmers coming out from universities (if programming is an art), as the process of learning programming is totally different if you think it's a science or art. If it's a science, do CS courses. If it is an art, put them into craftsman shops to learn how to code.
_delirium 16y ago
I don't think the analogy's a very good one. If you want a housing analogy, I'd say it's more like architecture than ceiling-fan installation. And architecture has, hundreds of years later, never totally coalesced into a science. There are scientific and engineering sub-parts, but still significant "art" parts as well, and good architects are at least reasonably knowledgeable about both.
- wallflower 16y ago
  If you have not yet read Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn", I highly recommend it. The basic premise is how the building is built determines how adaptable it is to change.
barrkel 16y ago
Radically disagree with you there. Wiring is in principle really simple - make sure the right wires are connected, insulated properly with appropriate safeguards; accounting is similar, where there are essentially only four kinds of things. Putting together a large piece of software, or optimizing a particular path in a large codebase, or putting together a creative solution to a class of problems, requires a much higher level of thinking. You need to bring together far more concepts at different levels of the abstraction stack, and have enough of them in your mind to arrange them without them interacting poorly at one level when you're coordinating them at a different level. Programming is more like building a whole new kind of house, without a plan, or altering an existing house, without it all falling down around your ears. As to subjectivity: you're wrong that software quality can be measured objectively, because of two simple facts: software isn't static - it must be modified over time - and humans are limited in their capacity for complexity. The abstraction which yields most readily to the changes that matter, such that those abstractions mesh well with those people doing the modifications, are subjectively good - their worth is dependent on the observer.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Programming is in principle really simple - make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other and are debugged properly. Sure, putting together a large piece of software is hard, but then again, putting together the electrical system for a nuclear plant or something on that order of complexity is just as hard, if not harder (no 'undo' switch on that one). There has to be a way to see that programming is really not that hard 'in principle'. It is hard in practice, and this goes for a large number of other activities as well. To argue on a programming forum that programming in principle is a simple thing is probably an unpopular point of view, but really, we're not half-gods or somehow special, we're just bricklayers and watchmakers. And if you've never built a brick wall I challenge you to go and do it and afterwards we'll talk about how easy it was 'in principle'.
  - ellyagg 16y ago
    I saw a few years ago a study which claimed professional programmers had the second or third highest average IQs of any occupation. Probably depends on how you measure, but you get my point. After 10 years of programming, it's only gotten marginally easier. The fundamental stuff of programming, solving highly complex and abstract problems, never seems to go away. Somehow I doubt bricklayers can say the same.
jimbokun 16y ago
"I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget." The vision you seem to be espousing is someone tells the programmer exactly what to do, and the programmer does it exactly to that specification. Wiring a house and balancing a budget are solved problems. So you seem to be saying that programming is also a solved problem. Which is so out of touch with reality I feel that, surely, I must be misunderstanding you. A computer program can do pretty much anything. Depending how you feel about the equivalence of Turing machines and human brains, you can argue that a computer program can potentially do anything a person can do. With the geometric increase of computing capacity available to us, how is it even conceivable that "programming" is equivalent to balancing a budget or wiring a house? You seem to suffer from an incredible lack of imagination. "However, I think that is a much better position to aspire to than self-aggrandizement and glorifying a skill that is really no different than any other skill that any suitably motivated 12 year can acquire with a couple library books and an internet connection." That is the same as saying a 12 year old can write or play a musical instrument. Sure, they can spell words and make sentences, or know the correct fingering for certain notes. But the potential for improvement in those endeavors is also unbounded. The same is true of programming, in my opinion.
- ismarc 16y ago
  An electrician is not given absolute exacting directions on what to do and then follows them by wrote. A master electrician is given guidelines (in the form of regulations) and then a list of what the customer wants. They then consolidate the two into a plan for the building (locations of outlets, fuse boxes, etc.). Once the general plan is done (what power is needed where for what) they have to determine where at what type of wires and junction boxes need to be places, working through the design of the building. Once the electrical diagram is completed, it's handed off to a journeyman, who, with other electricians, run the wires as close to the plan as possible, frequently having to deviate slightly due to the differences in reality. This is the absolute, most common, frequently found, frequently followed process for developing software. There is more "wiggle room" at each step, but it's the same exact process, whether it's one guy doing it and dreaming up the requirements or a team of thousands of developers.
Daniel_Newby 16y ago
"Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science." Yes it is, it is just that in information processing, the problem domains are often ill-specified and ill-behaved. The system analyst's job is to pull the pin on a wish list grenade, fling it at the engineers, and run away before they realize what has been done to them. The engineers are then forced to pile crap together, reverse-engineer a problem definition, and see if anybody wants to pay for solving it.

by gdp 16y ago

antirez 16y ago

> With a science of programming, we can aspire to a position where programmers can at least claim to be engineers. This is not a good aspiration I think. Engineers can be replaced with not huge efforts, while you can't easily replace artists. Also this vision will lead to more bad programmers coming out from universities (if programming is an art), as the process of learning programming is totally different if you think it's a science or art. If it's a science, do CS courses. If it is an art, put them into craftsman shops to learn how to code.

_delirium 16y ago

I don't think the analogy's a very good one. If you want a housing analogy, I'd say it's more like architecture than ceiling-fan installation. And architecture has, hundreds of years later, never totally coalesced into a science. There are scientific and engineering sub-parts, but still significant "art" parts as well, and good architects are at least reasonably knowledgeable about both.

wallflower 16y ago
If you have not yet read Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn", I highly recommend it. The basic premise is how the building is built determines how adaptable it is to change.

barrkel 16y ago

Radically disagree with you there. Wiring is in principle really simple - make sure the right wires are connected, insulated properly with appropriate safeguards; accounting is similar, where there are essentially only four kinds of things. Putting together a large piece of software, or optimizing a particular path in a large codebase, or putting together a creative solution to a class of problems, requires a much higher level of thinking. You need to bring together far more concepts at different levels of the abstraction stack, and have enough of them in your mind to arrange them without them interacting poorly at one level when you're coordinating them at a different level. Programming is more like building a whole new kind of house, without a plan, or altering an existing house, without it all falling down around your ears. As to subjectivity: you're wrong that software quality can be measured objectively, because of two simple facts: software isn't static - it must be modified over time - and humans are limited in their capacity for complexity. The abstraction which yields most readily to the changes that matter, such that those abstractions mesh well with those people doing the modifications, are subjectively good - their worth is dependent on the observer.

jacquesm 16y ago
Programming is in principle really simple - make sure the right lines of code are used, follow each other and are debugged properly. Sure, putting together a large piece of software is hard, but then again, putting together the electrical system for a nuclear plant or something on that order of complexity is just as hard, if not harder (no 'undo' switch on that one). There has to be a way to see that programming is really not that hard 'in principle'. It is hard in practice, and this goes for a large number of other activities as well. To argue on a programming forum that programming in principle is a simple thing is probably an unpopular point of view, but really, we're not half-gods or somehow special, we're just bricklayers and watchmakers. And if you've never built a brick wall I challenge you to go and do it and afterwards we'll talk about how easy it was 'in principle'.
- ellyagg 16y ago
  I saw a few years ago a study which claimed professional programmers had the second or third highest average IQs of any occupation. Probably depends on how you measure, but you get my point. After 10 years of programming, it's only gotten marginally easier. The fundamental stuff of programming, solving highly complex and abstract problems, never seems to go away. Somehow I doubt bricklayers can say the same.

jimbokun 16y ago

"I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget." The vision you seem to be espousing is someone tells the programmer exactly what to do, and the programmer does it exactly to that specification. Wiring a house and balancing a budget are solved problems. So you seem to be saying that programming is also a solved problem. Which is so out of touch with reality I feel that, surely, I must be misunderstanding you. A computer program can do pretty much anything. Depending how you feel about the equivalence of Turing machines and human brains, you can argue that a computer program can potentially do anything a person can do. With the geometric increase of computing capacity available to us, how is it even conceivable that "programming" is equivalent to balancing a budget or wiring a house? You seem to suffer from an incredible lack of imagination. "However, I think that is a much better position to aspire to than self-aggrandizement and glorifying a skill that is really no different than any other skill that any suitably motivated 12 year can acquire with a couple library books and an internet connection." That is the same as saying a 12 year old can write or play a musical instrument. Sure, they can spell words and make sentences, or know the correct fingering for certain notes. But the potential for improvement in those endeavors is also unbounded. The same is true of programming, in my opinion.

ismarc 16y ago
An electrician is not given absolute exacting directions on what to do and then follows them by wrote. A master electrician is given guidelines (in the form of regulations) and then a list of what the customer wants. They then consolidate the two into a plan for the building (locations of outlets, fuse boxes, etc.). Once the general plan is done (what power is needed where for what) they have to determine where at what type of wires and junction boxes need to be places, working through the design of the building. Once the electrical diagram is completed, it's handed off to a journeyman, who, with other electricians, run the wires as close to the plan as possible, frequently having to deviate slightly due to the differences in reality. This is the absolute, most common, frequently found, frequently followed process for developing software. There is more "wiggle room" at each step, but it's the same exact process, whether it's one guy doing it and dreaming up the requirements or a team of thousands of developers.

Daniel_Newby 16y ago

"Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science." Yes it is, it is just that in information processing, the problem domains are often ill-specified and ill-behaved. The system analyst's job is to pull the pin on a wish list grenade, fling it at the engineers, and run away before they realize what has been done to them. The engineers are then forced to pile crap together, reverse-engineer a problem definition, and see if anybody wants to pay for solving it.