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Can you point to what work specifically has improved the situation in terms of `developer abstractions` and `interactive/responsive programming` in the last few

Can you point to what work specifically has improved the situation in terms of `developer abstractions` and `interactive/responsive programming` in the last few decades?

igravious 9y ago
Yup, I can. Safety harnesses -> work in type theory and proof theory, witness the success of Rust and Haskell and Coq and so on. Developer abstractions -> work on design patterns and anti-patterns among other things. interactive/responsive programming -> IDEs, refactoring, time-travel debugging, visual programming spring to mind. To write off all these advances is suspect in my opinion. Also, why so glass half empty? Why not glass half full? Why not say, "wow – given how many lines of code are out there isn't it amazing how much has not gone tits-up? (pardon the expression!) That wouldn't fit the Bret Victor narrative though. One last thing – the claim that we are oh so crap at manipulating symbolic machinery. That too is suspect, one could argue we actually seem hard-wired through evolution for linguistic, logical, and symbolic thought.
- shalabhc 9y ago
  > interactive/responsive programming -> IDEs, refactoring, time-travel debugging, visual programming spring to mind. > one could argue we actually seem hard-wired through evolution for linguistic, logical, and symbolic thought. I think you're still talking about programming environments layered on top of the text centric representation, while Victor seems to be talking about something a little different. Sure we can do some symbolic and linguistic manipulation, but consider that rigorous blueprints for physical products such as cars and buildings are 'diagrams', not text. So purely language based description and manipulation doesn't apply everywhere. Now, what if many programs, or parts of programs may be better represented not as text with symbols, but in some other form that we haven't discovered yet?
- shalabhc 9y ago
  > To write off all these advances is suspect in my opinion. > That wouldn't fit the Bret Victor narrative though. Consider the possibility that there are real gaps people see and are trying to fill, rather than just trying to 'fit' a particular narrative.

Can you point to what work specifically has improved the situation in terms of `developer abstractions` and `interactive/responsive programming` in the last few decades?

igravious 9y ago

Yup, I can. Safety harnesses -> work in type theory and proof theory, witness the success of Rust and Haskell and Coq and so on. Developer abstractions -> work on design patterns and anti-patterns among other things. interactive/responsive programming -> IDEs, refactoring, time-travel debugging, visual programming spring to mind. To write off all these advances is suspect in my opinion. Also, why so glass half empty? Why not glass half full? Why not say, "wow – given how many lines of code are out there isn't it amazing how much has not gone tits-up? (pardon the expression!) That wouldn't fit the Bret Victor narrative though. One last thing – the claim that we are oh so crap at manipulating symbolic machinery. That too is suspect, one could argue we actually seem hard-wired through evolution for linguistic, logical, and symbolic thought.

shalabhc 9y ago
> interactive/responsive programming -> IDEs, refactoring, time-travel debugging, visual programming spring to mind. > one could argue we actually seem hard-wired through evolution for linguistic, logical, and symbolic thought. I think you're still talking about programming environments layered on top of the text centric representation, while Victor seems to be talking about something a little different. Sure we can do some symbolic and linguistic manipulation, but consider that rigorous blueprints for physical products such as cars and buildings are 'diagrams', not text. So purely language based description and manipulation doesn't apply everywhere. Now, what if many programs, or parts of programs may be better represented not as text with symbols, but in some other form that we haven't discovered yet?
shalabhc 9y ago
> To write off all these advances is suspect in my opinion. > That wouldn't fit the Bret Victor narrative though. Consider the possibility that there are real gaps people see and are trying to fill, rather than just trying to 'fit' a particular narrative.