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> Programming COULD use a lot of simplification I disagree, actually. There are plenty of languages, and even visual programming (via flow-diagrams, like Unrea

> Programming COULD use a lot of simplification I disagree, actually. There are plenty of languages, and even visual programming (via flow-diagrams, like Unreal Engine's "Blueprint" and Blender's shader flow diagrams), for those who just want to play around. For people who want to write a quick and dirty script, languages like python make it very easy already (relative to what they actually do). > Programming COULD use [...] removal of barriers Absolutely agree with this, though. There's an unnecessary elitism in many places that really needs to go.. > Development is sometimes hard and requires hard work to do right by people. This is *so* important for these people to understand. There are languages and domains where the "elitism" is fully justified. If someone decides they want to write a high performance, easy to use, cross platform native application and complain about C++ or Rust being too complicated, then they should find an easier job. There is justified and unjustified elitism, and there are domains which could use, if anything, even more "complication" and more specifications, more "barriers" to ensure higher quality.

aspaceman 6y ago
Yeah like there's 20 years of programming language research that studies exactly what this person is talking about. Graphical programming languages, removing barriers to learning, etc. They've been chugging away for decades and visual programming, Blender, Blueprints, Scratch, etc are all we got out of it. Does the article writer just think research doesn't exist? That CS sprouted from existence fully formed as a web browsing experience?
- naavis 6y ago
  > Yeah like there's 20 years of programming language research that studies exactly what this person is talking about. More like 50 years. :)
  - monetus 6y ago
    Relevant alan kay video from 1968 https://youtu.be/QQhVQ1UG6aM https://youtu.be/QQhVQ1UG6aM
    - alickz 6y ago
      That is extremely impressive. I'm not sure I want to code like that, but damn is it impressive.
      - phkahler 6y ago
        Everything looks better on a vector display. :-)
    - Ygg2 6y ago
      That's impressive demo. But graphical representation literally have an extra dimension of problems. Namely navigation and serialization.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Nothing in the article said “why hasn’t this been researched by the CS community?” The author was complaining about the state of things, and I don’t disagree. Programming is too hard. Error messages are always funky and assume expertise. And perhaps the node folks should better understand that beginners are often a target of their product and should find ways to make it more accessible to them. Blueprints and Scratch are widely used and are important tools. Your comment sounds very dismissive, and if you meant to be, then I think you’re unaware of their impact and reach. That said I don’t fully buy the author’s exact argument: - node.js local install IS for a traditional programming environment on the CLI - you don’t need node built in when you have the browser - plenty of web IDEs exist that do as the author wishes… run node code in the browser while also editing it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> There are languages and domains where the "elitism" is fully justified. If someone decides they want to write a high performance, easy to use, cross platform native application and complain about C++ or Rust being too complicated, then they should find an easier job. I disagree. I follow a lot of game developers and you'd be hard pressed to say they don't do high-performance corss-platform native application development. They almost universally think C++ (and by extension Rust) are too complicated. They generally use C++ anyway because that's the industry standard, but they think there is definitely a conceptually less-complicated way to do things. See: Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori, for instance. The former is so sick of C++ he's making his own programming language, and the latter routinely complains about C++'s complexity and eschews all but the simplest features of it.
- bccdee 6y ago
  I'd argue that Rust is meaningfully simpler than C++. Mind you, it's also a fairly feature-rich language, but the complexity of C++ comes from decades of new features building up trying to supersede older features. C++ is several different languages by now depending on which feature set you use, but Rust is still just one language. C++'s complexity is also a product of design choices like using templates to do both generics and metaprogramming, which in hindsight probably made things much harder than they needed to be. Rust has the benefit of being able to avoid decades of C++'s missteps.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    I don't know much about Rust, because it doesn't seem to be the kind of language I want to use, so I can't personally speak to its complexity. However, I do know that a lot of objections to it from the people I follow are around the borrow checker and both the friction and high[0] compile times it causes. [0] to put that in context, Jon is frequently annoyed by the sub-second linking time incurred by LLVM because it is more than an order of magnitude longer than his largest program (~60k line game, IIRC) takes to compile.
    - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
bccdee 6y ago
To be fair, c++ is too complicated, but that's an unrelated conversation, haha.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
And yet... when Flash provided a simple, easy, way for people to get into coding using a GUI, there was an explosion of creativity. Flash was terrible for all sorts of other reasons. But it did demonstrate that there is a class of incredibly creative people out there who can create amazing things, but not on the command line, and not using the tools currently available. How do we get them doing that again?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Shut down YouTube. I'm serious. I don't think there can be another "explosion of creativity" of the (relative) magnitude of Flash, because people now express themselves by recording videos. It's both easier and more social than making interactive software, even with Flash.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. You don't inspire creativity-explosions by shutting down existing platforms, you do it by providing new affordances, which is what Flash did. And videos aren't even interactive! There's not even any comparison here.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Mass creativity follows the path of least resistance. Existence of YouTube - as a much easier and more social venue for self-expression - precludes mass popularity of Flash vids/games. To beat YouTube, a new affordance must be both easier and more socially appealing (because mass creativity tends to be done mostly to show off in front of friends/colleagues or romantic interests).
      - virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
        > because mass creativity tends to be done mostly to show off in front of friends/colleagues or romantic interests ?? What kind of bizarre red-pill nonsense is this? You think all those interactive Flash microsites were to impress girls? lol

aspaceman 6y ago

Yeah like there's 20 years of programming language research that studies exactly what this person is talking about. Graphical programming languages, removing barriers to learning, etc. They've been chugging away for decades and visual programming, Blender, Blueprints, Scratch, etc are all we got out of it. Does the article writer just think research doesn't exist? That CS sprouted from existence fully formed as a web browsing experience?

naavis 6y ago
> Yeah like there's 20 years of programming language research that studies exactly what this person is talking about. More like 50 years. :)
- monetus 6y ago
  Relevant alan kay video from 1968 https://youtu.be/QQhVQ1UG6aM https://youtu.be/QQhVQ1UG6aM
  - alickz 6y ago
    That is extremely impressive. I'm not sure I want to code like that, but damn is it impressive.
    - phkahler 6y ago
      Everything looks better on a vector display. :-)
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    That's impressive demo. But graphical representation literally have an extra dimension of problems. Namely navigation and serialization.
azinman2 6y ago
Nothing in the article said “why hasn’t this been researched by the CS community?” The author was complaining about the state of things, and I don’t disagree. Programming is too hard. Error messages are always funky and assume expertise. And perhaps the node folks should better understand that beginners are often a target of their product and should find ways to make it more accessible to them. Blueprints and Scratch are widely used and are important tools. Your comment sounds very dismissive, and if you meant to be, then I think you’re unaware of their impact and reach. That said I don’t fully buy the author’s exact argument: - node.js local install IS for a traditional programming environment on the CLI - you don’t need node built in when you have the browser - plenty of web IDEs exist that do as the author wishes… run node code in the browser while also editing it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

> There are languages and domains where the "elitism" is fully justified. If someone decides they want to write a high performance, easy to use, cross platform native application and complain about C++ or Rust being too complicated, then they should find an easier job. I disagree. I follow a lot of game developers and you'd be hard pressed to say they don't do high-performance corss-platform native application development. They almost universally think C++ (and by extension Rust) are too complicated. They generally use C++ anyway because that's the industry standard, but they think there is definitely a conceptually less-complicated way to do things. See: Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori, for instance. The former is so sick of C++ he's making his own programming language, and the latter routinely complains about C++'s complexity and eschews all but the simplest features of it.

bccdee 6y ago
I'd argue that Rust is meaningfully simpler than C++. Mind you, it's also a fairly feature-rich language, but the complexity of C++ comes from decades of new features building up trying to supersede older features. C++ is several different languages by now depending on which feature set you use, but Rust is still just one language. C++'s complexity is also a product of design choices like using templates to do both generics and metaprogramming, which in hindsight probably made things much harder than they needed to be. Rust has the benefit of being able to avoid decades of C++'s missteps.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I don't know much about Rust, because it doesn't seem to be the kind of language I want to use, so I can't personally speak to its complexity. However, I do know that a lot of objections to it from the people I follow are around the borrow checker and both the friction and high[0] compile times it causes. [0] to put that in context, Jon is frequently annoyed by the sub-second linking time incurred by LLVM because it is more than an order of magnitude longer than his largest program (~60k line game, IIRC) takes to compile.
  - shrimp_emoji 6y ago

bccdee 6y ago

To be fair, c++ is too complicated, but that's an unrelated conversation, haha.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

And yet... when Flash provided a simple, easy, way for people to get into coding using a GUI, there was an explosion of creativity. Flash was terrible for all sorts of other reasons. But it did demonstrate that there is a class of incredibly creative people out there who can create amazing things, but not on the command line, and not using the tools currently available. How do we get them doing that again?

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Shut down YouTube. I'm serious. I don't think there can be another "explosion of creativity" of the (relative) magnitude of Flash, because people now express themselves by recording videos. It's both easier and more social than making interactive software, even with Flash.
- virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. You don't inspire creativity-explosions by shutting down existing platforms, you do it by providing new affordances, which is what Flash did. And videos aren't even interactive! There's not even any comparison here.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Mass creativity follows the path of least resistance. Existence of YouTube - as a much easier and more social venue for self-expression - precludes mass popularity of Flash vids/games. To beat YouTube, a new affordance must be both easier and more socially appealing (because mass creativity tends to be done mostly to show off in front of friends/colleagues or romantic interests).
    - virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
      > because mass creativity tends to be done mostly to show off in front of friends/colleagues or romantic interests ?? What kind of bizarre red-pill nonsense is this? You think all those interactive Flash microsites were to impress girls? lol