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> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th

> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging.” Today computer languages are mostly easier to learn than a totally new human language I guess. I still thought this one was quote-worthy. Also: is it just me or was writing in some ways better before?

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
The languages themselves, yes, but there's a lot more that comes into play besides the language. I'm working with Go right now and there's a lot of ground to cover with subjects like error handling, context, concurrency, web services, modules, and the whole ecosystem. I had the same experience with Java and its vast standard library and the community (e.g. J2EE, Spring). And with Javascript and the entirety of web development and (nowadays) package management and backwards compatibility. So yeah you can learn the words and letters - most languages only have a couple dozen keywords and characters anyway - but the language is much more complicated than just the words and letters.
jhbadger 7y ago
Way easier. It is hardly noteworthy for a programmer to know a half dozen programming languages well, but a person who knows a half dozen human languages well is.
- HPsquared 7y ago
  One needs a lot more fluency than the other - there's a difference between what could be considered 'knowing' a programming language (where it's possible to slowly cobble together, or decode, a sentence over an afternoon with documentation to hand) and conversing 'live' in a natural language.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
  I think the main determining factor here is vocabulary. Modern programming langs have fairly small #s of reserved words, and when you add the standard library on top of that, you essentially have all the 'vocab' you need to use the language well. This is because (a) a large part of programming is the act of creating new vocab via writing new APIs/libraries/functions, and (b) the time pressure is significantly lessened; there's no issue with consulting docs for the interfaces you forget. Meanwhile, human languages are essentially unusable without a fairly extensive vocabulary, and importantly a vocabulary that has to be memorized and available at a moment's notice.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

The languages themselves, yes, but there's a lot more that comes into play besides the language. I'm working with Go right now and there's a lot of ground to cover with subjects like error handling, context, concurrency, web services, modules, and the whole ecosystem. I had the same experience with Java and its vast standard library and the community (e.g. J2EE, Spring). And with Javascript and the entirety of web development and (nowadays) package management and backwards compatibility. So yeah you can learn the words and letters - most languages only have a couple dozen keywords and characters anyway - but the language is much more complicated than just the words and letters.

jhbadger 7y ago

Way easier. It is hardly noteworthy for a programmer to know a half dozen programming languages well, but a person who knows a half dozen human languages well is.

HPsquared 7y ago
One needs a lot more fluency than the other - there's a difference between what could be considered 'knowing' a programming language (where it's possible to slowly cobble together, or decode, a sentence over an afternoon with documentation to hand) and conversing 'live' in a natural language.
Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
I think the main determining factor here is vocabulary. Modern programming langs have fairly small #s of reserved words, and when you add the standard library on top of that, you essentially have all the 'vocab' you need to use the language well. This is because (a) a large part of programming is the act of creating new vocab via writing new APIs/libraries/functions, and (b) the time pressure is significantly lessened; there's no issue with consulting docs for the interfaces you forget. Meanwhile, human languages are essentially unusable without a fairly extensive vocabulary, and importantly a vocabulary that has to be memorized and available at a moment's notice.