7 ms·

One thing I'd add to these principles: I always emphasize when I teach programming that there's no magic. There's always a reason behind everything and regular

by euske 10y ago

One thing I'd add to these principles: I always emphasize when I teach programming that there's no magic. There's always a reason behind everything and regular folks like you can understand it. There are people (even among tech community) who like to say something is "magic" or "beyond one's comprehension", but don't take their words seriously. Mysticism is just intellectual laziness. Don't indulge in it.

dwringer 10y ago
Ah, but don't forget Clarke's three laws: 1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  #1 is a complicated way of saying that almost everything that a distinguished elderly scientist has an opinion about is possible. Did Clarke really believe that truly impossible things will cause elderly experts to be unsure? Or did he really just mean "almost everything is possible"?
emodendroket 10y ago
When people say something is "magic" they don't mean it is literally inexplicable.
- projektir 10y ago
  Indeed, I often use the term "magic" to describe something that happens for very arbitrary reasons or through an extremely complex and counter intuitive set of steps. I.e., code that uses gotos, hard-to-understand reflection, or code/language that has a large amount of esoteric assumptions and rules in the background.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    I call implicitly executing code magic. It is not like I could not comprehend it, but I should not have to, it should be obvious. I use the word to describe bad interfaces, giving me this feeling of little control. Big fan of The Zen of Python.
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  I'll usually call some technology thing "magic" when I mean to say that something is useful to me, but that its usefulness to me doesn't require me to understand it at any deep level (or even shallow level sometimes). Wifi is kind of like that: very useful to me, I use it every day... have almost no understanding of the ins/outs... it's PFM (pure fucking magic) to me. And I don't have much interest in learning about it more than than I know.... I've got other fish to fry. Same thing about my car's motor: I only know the most theoretical background of internal combustion engines... have me diagnose an engine problem? Ha! Everything in front of the firewall and under the hood may as well been conjured by Merlin himself. Life is short. I spend it miserly on those things I have to or want to care about and wifi and car engines aren't those things (now).
  - suyash 10y ago
    There is no excuse for not to understand the so called 'magic' even at a very superficial level. There are tons of blogs, videos, how to articles, books etc. Just search on YouTube and I am sure you will understand most of anything in just a few minutes.
    - barsonme 10y ago
      entirely depends on the definition of "understand". superficial understanding you'll forget in a couple weeks? sure. but nothing more, unless you're some sort of savant.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      The excuse is that there are literally billions of things that one could thrive to understand at least superficially, but the typical human life has only 4500 weeks.
- 3131s 10y ago
  I hear the words "magic" and "magical" used in the Python community to mean that a particular module or framework does not expose its inner workings and does a lot of work behind the scenes that is not transparent to the programmer.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    I feel as though Django is described as 'magic' quite a lot, and frameworks with apparently little magic (like Flask) aren't accused of it so much. The 'magic' trend has carried over to Common Lisp with frameworks like Clack supporting similar 'magic' to Flask.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Right, yeah. I mean, depending on your philosophy that might be good or bad, but I don't think it's literally expressing a mindset that "nobody could understand how this works, just don't touch it."
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
adrianratnapala 10y ago
I'm pretty sure this is not going to help "ordinary" people. Unless they already think like you and me. When I was a kid, I wanted to know how all the black boxes worked -- one of my greatest days was when my father explained the internal combustion engine well enough that cars no longer seemed like magic. Later I noticed that many people -- especially when talking about electronics -- would ask "How does it work?", when they actually meant "How do you use it?" I thought this was just a quirk of the Australian dialect, but as I gained more experience with people, I realised it was really an aspect of human thought. To most people, knowing "how it works" is no more than being familiar enough with the magic spells that you can use them with confidence.
- braveo 10y ago
  It's a matter of time and importance. Sure, I'd love to live forever so I could take the time to fully understand everything, but unfortunately I have to optimize my time, and learning the ins and outs of an engine just isn't that important in my day to day life.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    A little defensive no? While I tried to convey my own excitements and my dislikes, I was careful in my comment not to say that everyone most like the same things. What I will say though is that there is a difference between known how a thing works and how to use it. Very often you only need the latter. But thinking that it equals the former is just an error.
    - braveo 10y ago
      My post wasn't defensive, it was pointing out that treating things like "magic boxes" is a purely rational decision, not an inherent character flaw in people. But then you find a way to try and turn even that into a flaw of some sort, and continue with your narrative that it's somehow a problem that people don't take the time to fully understand everything they use.
- bittercynic 10y ago
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
There's no magic, but sometimes there's no real reason behind why something is the way it is. Sometimes a developer just picks a path because they had to solve a problem, and they didn't think deeply about it. I understand that your explanation if focused more on how everything can be understood, but I think it's worth making this slight clarification for some cases.
- suyash 10y ago
  You make a good point. Let's replace the word 'magic' with 'abstraction' as 'magic' is quite overloaded. Yes, there is a place and time for abstraction in computer programming but as developers gain experience they should start piercing the layers of abstraction to understand the whole picture.
Baeocystin 10y ago
I agree to an extent, but when explaining things to beginners, there genuinely are elements that are 100% impossible to understand until earlier, building-block concepts are firmly under one's belt. And knowing that there are hard limits on understanding is important. It is almost reassuring: yes, you don't (and can't) understand x right now, but you will be able to when you enhance your mental models! Learning is powerful! Contrast that to "you can understand anything just as you are" which is a dangerous attitude, IMO, because it teaches that students don't need to change. But what is learning, if not that?
crispyambulance 10y ago
Saying that something is "magical" is often merely short-hand for "this behavior would take too much time or effort to figure out right now, let's not get lost in the weeds and just continue along with our objectives." Admittedly, some technical folks are apt to take words literally and don't response well to the usage of the word "magic/magical" even when its meant in a figurative sense.
- eriknstr 10y ago
  While I agree that the person that is using the word "magic" might often do so for the reason that you say, I think it is better to state it as "an implementation detail" rather than using the word "magic". Not because you and I don't understand what is meant but because by using that word we give power to the idea that something is beyond comprehension when that is not what we meant.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    People who believe magic exists don't believe magic is beyong comprehension
huherto 10y ago
Adding to this advice. Sometimes it is easy to blame the compiler, O.S., etc. In may experience it has been my own fault 98% of the time. Specially when using very popular software tools.
nikofeyn 10y ago
people calling something "magic" within a context of computers and mysticism are two totally unrelated things. people don't literally think something is under the influence of a supernatural force. and you may claim there is a reason behind everything, but good luck finding the reason. no one will ever find the reason for every single bug, issue, problem, etc. they come across. so just because there might exist a reason, the fact that it can't be practically found makes that stance a bit mystical itself.

by euske 10y ago

dwringer 10y ago

Ah, but don't forget Clarke's three laws: 1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
#1 is a complicated way of saying that almost everything that a distinguished elderly scientist has an opinion about is possible. Did Clarke really believe that truly impossible things will cause elderly experts to be unsure? Or did he really just mean "almost everything is possible"?

emodendroket 10y ago

When people say something is "magic" they don't mean it is literally inexplicable.

projektir 10y ago
Indeed, I often use the term "magic" to describe something that happens for very arbitrary reasons or through an extremely complex and counter intuitive set of steps. I.e., code that uses gotos, hard-to-understand reflection, or code/language that has a large amount of esoteric assumptions and rules in the background.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I call implicitly executing code magic. It is not like I could not comprehend it, but I should not have to, it should be obvious. I use the word to describe bad interfaces, giving me this feeling of little control. Big fan of The Zen of Python.
sbuttgereit 10y ago
I'll usually call some technology thing "magic" when I mean to say that something is useful to me, but that its usefulness to me doesn't require me to understand it at any deep level (or even shallow level sometimes). Wifi is kind of like that: very useful to me, I use it every day... have almost no understanding of the ins/outs... it's PFM (pure fucking magic) to me. And I don't have much interest in learning about it more than than I know.... I've got other fish to fry. Same thing about my car's motor: I only know the most theoretical background of internal combustion engines... have me diagnose an engine problem? Ha! Everything in front of the firewall and under the hood may as well been conjured by Merlin himself. Life is short. I spend it miserly on those things I have to or want to care about and wifi and car engines aren't those things (now).
- suyash 10y ago
  There is no excuse for not to understand the so called 'magic' even at a very superficial level. There are tons of blogs, videos, how to articles, books etc. Just search on YouTube and I am sure you will understand most of anything in just a few minutes.
  - barsonme 10y ago
    entirely depends on the definition of "understand". superficial understanding you'll forget in a couple weeks? sure. but nothing more, unless you're some sort of savant.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    The excuse is that there are literally billions of things that one could thrive to understand at least superficially, but the typical human life has only 4500 weeks.
3131s 10y ago
I hear the words "magic" and "magical" used in the Python community to mean that a particular module or framework does not expose its inner workings and does a lot of work behind the scenes that is not transparent to the programmer.
- ue_ 10y ago
  I feel as though Django is described as 'magic' quite a lot, and frameworks with apparently little magic (like Flask) aren't accused of it so much. The 'magic' trend has carried over to Common Lisp with frameworks like Clack supporting similar 'magic' to Flask.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Right, yeah. I mean, depending on your philosophy that might be good or bad, but I don't think it's literally expressing a mindset that "nobody could understand how this works, just don't touch it."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

adrianratnapala 10y ago

I'm pretty sure this is not going to help "ordinary" people. Unless they already think like you and me. When I was a kid, I wanted to know how all the black boxes worked -- one of my greatest days was when my father explained the internal combustion engine well enough that cars no longer seemed like magic. Later I noticed that many people -- especially when talking about electronics -- would ask "How does it work?", when they actually meant "How do you use it?" I thought this was just a quirk of the Australian dialect, but as I gained more experience with people, I realised it was really an aspect of human thought. To most people, knowing "how it works" is no more than being familiar enough with the magic spells that you can use them with confidence.

braveo 10y ago
It's a matter of time and importance. Sure, I'd love to live forever so I could take the time to fully understand everything, but unfortunately I have to optimize my time, and learning the ins and outs of an engine just isn't that important in my day to day life.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  A little defensive no? While I tried to convey my own excitements and my dislikes, I was careful in my comment not to say that everyone most like the same things. What I will say though is that there is a difference between known how a thing works and how to use it. Very often you only need the latter. But thinking that it equals the former is just an error.
  - braveo 10y ago
    My post wasn't defensive, it was pointing out that treating things like "magic boxes" is a purely rational decision, not an inherent character flaw in people. But then you find a way to try and turn even that into a flaw of some sort, and continue with your narrative that it's somehow a problem that people don't take the time to fully understand everything they use.
bittercynic 10y ago

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

There's no magic, but sometimes there's no real reason behind why something is the way it is. Sometimes a developer just picks a path because they had to solve a problem, and they didn't think deeply about it. I understand that your explanation if focused more on how everything can be understood, but I think it's worth making this slight clarification for some cases.

suyash 10y ago
You make a good point. Let's replace the word 'magic' with 'abstraction' as 'magic' is quite overloaded. Yes, there is a place and time for abstraction in computer programming but as developers gain experience they should start piercing the layers of abstraction to understand the whole picture.

Baeocystin 10y ago

I agree to an extent, but when explaining things to beginners, there genuinely are elements that are 100% impossible to understand until earlier, building-block concepts are firmly under one's belt. And knowing that there are hard limits on understanding is important. It is almost reassuring: yes, you don't (and can't) understand x right now, but you will be able to when you enhance your mental models! Learning is powerful! Contrast that to "you can understand anything just as you are" which is a dangerous attitude, IMO, because it teaches that students don't need to change. But what is learning, if not that?

crispyambulance 10y ago

Saying that something is "magical" is often merely short-hand for "this behavior would take too much time or effort to figure out right now, let's not get lost in the weeds and just continue along with our objectives." Admittedly, some technical folks are apt to take words literally and don't response well to the usage of the word "magic/magical" even when its meant in a figurative sense.

eriknstr 10y ago
While I agree that the person that is using the word "magic" might often do so for the reason that you say, I think it is better to state it as "an implementation detail" rather than using the word "magic". Not because you and I don't understand what is meant but because by using that word we give power to the idea that something is beyond comprehension when that is not what we meant.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  People who believe magic exists don't believe magic is beyong comprehension

huherto 10y ago

Adding to this advice. Sometimes it is easy to blame the compiler, O.S., etc. In may experience it has been my own fault 98% of the time. Specially when using very popular software tools.

nikofeyn 10y ago

people calling something "magic" within a context of computers and mysticism are two totally unrelated things. people don't literally think something is under the influence of a supernatural force. and you may claim there is a reason behind everything, but good luck finding the reason. no one will ever find the reason for every single bug, issue, problem, etc. they come across. so just because there might exist a reason, the fact that it can't be practically found makes that stance a bit mystical itself.