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Coming from EE, I like the thinking behind this. Components are similar to functions, they are tested to the nth-degree out of inventory, liability, and other

Coming from EE, I like the thinking behind this. Components are similar to functions, they are tested to the nth-degree out of inventory, liability, and other concerns, and everything goes along well enough. What would really help for that style of development would be a sort of apropos feature for your own code where you could look up methods by keywords rather than just identifiers. For larger projects, having people re-write several variations of what is basically the same method can be a problem even with mutable code. Perhaps Knuth's literate programming would help? edit: And I bring apropos up because if you break things down into very small functions, and you don't have that, you end up writing several invariants of the same function because you can't find the one you're looking for.

eropple 9y ago
Literate programming, as a concept, is super interesting. But it has a fundamental problem, when applied to software-as-an-industry, that I think is difficult to solve: many, if not programmers, may be literate but are not literate enough. If you go look at a Knuth example of literate programming, there emerges a few fundamental capabilities. One: the ability to look at code fresh, as if it were to someone wholly unfamiliar with the module or function in question. And to do so without leaping to the smarmy-tech-nerd "I understand it so this is easy" thing--we're talking about a baseline level of empathy cultivated so as to be able to return to the mindset of a novice in order to help them climb from there. Two: the ability to explain, without the prior knowledge of that module (unless you are to reference that module, which has the same rules), what it does and why it matters. In words. Not "the code is the documentation", but words. Three: the ability to do both of the above engagingly enough that people don't go take a nap instead of read it. You don't need to be able to write hot fire, but you need to be able to write. These are difficult things unless you have a decent grounding in the humanities, and even on a place like HN, which self-selects for people who want to write things about stuff, you see pretty serious capability gaps on the regular. (To be clear, I wish it was the answer, I just don't think it is. Not without a fairly radical rethinking of how much humanities matter to software development.)
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  True enough, though at this point I'd be grateful for any kind of consistent method-to-description binding. Having it be compiler enforced would also be nice. Even if most of the descriptions end up along the lines of "do some stuff with the string", at least that's something.

eropple 9y ago

Literate programming, as a concept, is super interesting. But it has a fundamental problem, when applied to software-as-an-industry, that I think is difficult to solve: many, if not programmers, may be literate but are not literate enough. If you go look at a Knuth example of literate programming, there emerges a few fundamental capabilities. One: the ability to look at code fresh, as if it were to someone wholly unfamiliar with the module or function in question. And to do so without leaping to the smarmy-tech-nerd "I understand it so this is easy" thing--we're talking about a baseline level of empathy cultivated so as to be able to return to the mindset of a novice in order to help them climb from there. Two: the ability to explain, without the prior knowledge of that module (unless you are to reference that module, which has the same rules), what it does and why it matters. In words. Not "the code is the documentation", but words. Three: the ability to do both of the above engagingly enough that people don't go take a nap instead of read it. You don't need to be able to write hot fire, but you need to be able to write. These are difficult things unless you have a decent grounding in the humanities, and even on a place like HN, which self-selects for people who want to write things about stuff, you see pretty serious capability gaps on the regular. (To be clear, I wish it was the answer, I just don't think it is. Not without a fairly radical rethinking of how much humanities matter to software development.)

jstewartmobile 9y ago
True enough, though at this point I'd be grateful for any kind of consistent method-to-description binding. Having it be compiler enforced would also be nice. Even if most of the descriptions end up along the lines of "do some stuff with the string", at least that's something.