13 ms·

"My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

513 points by damncabbage 15y ago

Watchmannen 15y ago
Actually the article is missing one thing. Yes, you need to be able to express yourself in the (programming) language. But, and here is the thing, the hard part is not learning the words and the grammar, nor actually writing in the language using the said words and grammar. No the hard problem is figuring out WHAT to say and HOW say it to make others (humans or computers, depending if it is a natural or programming language). In terms if human language it is about formulating a narrative story that presents the problem and the solution to the reader. In terms of programming language it is about describing the data structures, data transformations and transactions/communications needed to perform the task. This is the hard part and that is what separates good writers and good programmers from their lousy counterparts. BTW: I hope this was parseable.
- dchest 15y ago
  I don't think this is missing from the article, it's actually what the author said. If you only learn the words and the grammar, without seeing how they are used to express things (and without trying to express things), you won't learn foreign language/programming.
- DasIch 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's what he meant.
larrik 15y ago
I think he's right. In college, my CS 2 class was taught by a professor very different than the rest of the teachers there. He wanted all of your programming assignments on paper[1]. Then, you'd get it back with every possible bug marked in your program, and he very rarely missed any[2]. That was the first time in college I thought "I really need to learn how to do that!" I went to a state school, so maybe all you guys with your degrees from fancy schools wouldn't be that impressed, but the difference between this professor and the rest there was gigantic. (He retired that year in a round of state-wide budget cuts, so that's the last class I had him.) [1] A lot of the other teachers wanted you to hand in binaries so they can see it run. Sometimes with the code, sometimes not. [2] I actually don't know of any case where he did, but I'm not saying "never."
- klbarry 15y ago
  From what I've heard, professors in prestigious schools aren't any better at teaching. They're hired for their prestige and research ability.
  - timtadh 15y ago
    All true facts unfortunately. To get better teachers you have to attend a "teaching" college/university. This name is detrimental, as most students would probably be happier at such a place. The "research" university really isn't for everyone but they get the most prestige and people think, oh I should go there learn from the "brightest mind in the field".
    - alexgartrell 15y ago
      The value of Stanford, MIT, CMU, etc. isn't that the professors are so good at teaching; it's that they are smart student aggregators. Nothing motivates you like not being the smart one anymore.
      - BrandonM 15y ago
        That might be true of some people. For someone coming from a small town where everyone told him that he would go on to do amazing, wonderful things, it can be very depressing for him to learn that he is nothing special.
        alexgartrell 15y ago
        That's more of a feature than a bug. The opposite can be true too, I expected to get tanked at CMU and did pretty well (3.65 gpa, senior thesis, going to Facebook). If I'd gone to Ohio State like the majority of my peers from High School (Hilliard Darby High School has sent a whopping two people to top tier engineering schools (CMU and MIT) and none to Harvard) and even gotten a 4.0, I never would have believed I was more than a "talented state school kid." At the end of the day, it's on you to put yourself in the most challenging situation you can possibly survive so that you can learn the most. Sheltering one's fragile ego never did much for anyone in the long run.
johnnyjustice 15y ago
He is right. Good writing is sussicint, concise, and says a lot with a little. Good programming is clear and does a lot with a little.
- corin_ 15y ago
  In some cases good writing says a lot with a little, but by no means is that always a requirement for good writing.
6ren 15y ago
So what's good example code? Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it. This is made worse because it's hard to tell if code is necessarily complex without understanding the problem it solves, which may be complex. Further, if you don't yet know what good code is, how can you recognize it? Of course, if you are intelligent and reflective and try ideas out, you can learn from both code and bad - it's all raw material, grist for the mill. IMHO the hard part of programming is understanding the problem to be solved. The solving is easy.
- dchest 15y ago
  Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it. Schools have suggested reading lists. Do they have the same for code reading? Fortunately, on the Internet, we have experienced people to help us: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22good+code+to+read%22&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22good+cod...
  - 6ren 15y ago
    > [suggested code reading lists] That's a good idea, but I haven't heard of one. I think the best thing is just to read a lot of code, good and bad. BTW did you check the result of that search?
    - dchest 15y ago
      BTW did you check the result of that search? Haha, just skimmed through it, sorry. I remember threads on this topic, but it seems like HN search for this request failed to find them.
  - cturner 15y ago
    Interesting. You could teach blocks of code in a similar manner to the way poetry is taught. "Why did the author do this?" "What effect do you get when reading this block?"
VMG 15y ago
I'm a little suspect if this analogy goes beyond "theoretical understanding without practical experience is worthless". You could draw a similar analogy between architects who know everything about architecture but don't know how to design proper buildings because they have no experience. Or painter who knows everything about technique but can't paint a horse and so on. It is easy to find differences between good writing and good code: Uniformity in code is good, while uniformity in prose is bad. In writing, a large vocabulary is an advantage, it's difficult to see if that is the case in language. In programming, proper abstractions are essential while I can't really see the equivalent of that in writing. As far as analogies go, I can't see how this one is much better than others.
- regularfry 15y ago
  Uniformity in code is bad - it tells you that there's a common concern or pattern which should be factored out. Uniformity in code style is essential, the same way it is for prose.
  - VMG 15y ago
    Is it? In prose you say "first he rushed to the exit door, then he leaped down the stairs, finally he ran to get the train" while in programming it is better to write socket.close(); window.close(); file.close()
    - vorg 15y ago
      Better prose is: "He rushed to the exit, leaped down the stairs, and ran for the train." Better programming is to factor out the action: [socket, window, file]*.close()
      - jamesbritt 15y ago
        Indeed. Programming is more like writing math than natural language.
      - SlyShy 15y ago
wccrawford 15y ago
Programming isn't about writing. It's about logic. It's a series of instructions for a computer to follow. The old 'write down how to tie shoes' or 'write down how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich' projects show just how hard it can be to pin down exactly what needs to be done to do seemingly simple tasks. The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic.
- damncabbage 15y ago
  The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic. The author of the post seems to me to be saying that, given that logic of a great number of programs can be pretty simple, the way you express the logic becomes more of a concern. Take the following: @post.comments Compare it to: $this->post->findDependentRowset('Comment'); Both mean the same thing, but the latter seems like the programming equivalent of purple prose by comparison.
- MediaBehavior 15y ago
  And is not (good) writing also about logic - even though sometimes it's fuzzy or the (twisted) logic of human psychology? Writing requires "logicking out" the likely responses of the reader - and the pseudologic of parsing by the human brain (see Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions").
- ignifero 15y ago
  Are you not contradicting yourself here?
- sp332 15y ago
  Unless you're designing your own ICs and then programming them in machine code, there's some amount of logic and knowledge built-in already. I don't have to explain to the computer how to add two numbers together, or how to take a square root, or sort a list. It is necessary to understand the vocabulary that the computer already has. That's what OP meant by learning idioms: I can either painstakingly describe how to make a sandwich, or I can just say "make a PB&J" and you know what I mean.
- mckoss 15y ago
vbtemp 15y ago
Oh come on. Programming is not writing. When you're reading a novel you don't have to worry about concurrent access to a resource, threads, asynchronous events, or even much less conditional branching. With all due respect, I think this is just an inane post. That said, I can't blame the guy for dropping software development and moving to Japan to teach ESL. I often entertain similar fantasies all the time - programming is a great way to have the zest for life sucked straight out of you Edit: Would someone have the courtesy to mention why they are downvoting?
- tjogin 15y ago
  And in programming you don't have to worry about capturing the audience, the development of the characters, the story arch, being clear but not being obvious, etc. Both in programming and writing, the actual writing part is the easiest part. And while bad programmers can make a program work, and bad writers can tell a story, it takes good ones to do it coherently, efficiently and enjoyably. It's not the exact same thing, which I don't think anyone is saying, but there are some similarities there, especially the aspect of writing readable code.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    They're not nearly the same thing. The scope of modern literature has hardly moved in hundreds of years. Compare Updike, Roth, or Mitchell to Dante or Shakespeare -- they'd seem like near contemporaries in programming. In contrast, in the past, programs to do Newtons method or compute trig tables were often the full scope of a program. You certainly never had a Halo 3, Windows 7, Google Search, or WordLens application written even 50 years ago. Good literature isn't about automating increasingly sophisticated processes. Programming is all about that. This leads to increasing complexity of programs, where the goal of software engineering is to abstract/hide as much of the complexity as possible. The only things they really share in common is that they're both written in text. If programs were written by soldering wires no one would make such odd acquisitions (do EE relate circuit design to writing literature?). I think we give this slashdot author far too much credit.
    - 15y ago
dpapathanasiou 15y ago
That reminded of this quote (I forget who said it): "Programs are written for humans to read, not for machines to execute"
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- tree_of_item 15y ago
  That was at the beginning of SICP.
david927 15y ago
It's a nice theory but I disagree. Programming languages are really just a poor effort towards a mathematical notation. There are those adept in theory that can't practice well, but that's because to practice the art means dealing with a plethora of hacks, exceptions and miscellaneous trivia completely unrelated to the core problem at hand. Personally, I don't think the answer is becoming 'fluent' in handling the exceptions and idiosyncrasies of the chosen language, framework and platform. Rather we need to work on building a notation that provides better abstraction mechanisms.
- windsurfer 15y ago
  How is mathematical notation different from a written language like English? It conveys meaning using glyphs, uses nouns and verbs (and even adjectives). It expresses all sorts of ideas. One might even say that math's notation is a poor effort towards English.
  - david927 15y ago
    Language can be expressive in ambiguous ways, with multiple valid ways to express the same emotion. Notation should be definable, unambiguous, and precise. The fewer ways to express something, the better.
    - windsurfer 15y ago
      Why?: die unless $file; if (!$file){ die; } Which is neater? Should I not be able to write the first one?
      - absconditus 15y ago
        The problem is that the language becomes virtually unknowable. Perl has a ridiculous amount of syntax. I am sure that I could find half a dozen lines of Perl code that the average Perl developer would not understand because everyone only knows part of the language.
edw519 15y ago
Most code sucks because we have the fluency equivalent of 3 year olds trying to write a novel. Let's get a little more specific... Most code sucks because the programmer: - didn't name his variables what the really were - didn't understand variable state - didn't understand variable scope - didn't understand the basic concepts of iteration - didn't understand any of the algorithms he needed - wrote the same lines of code multiple times - didn't know enough about the language to find a better construct - didn't understand concurrency - didn't understand fundamental data base concepts - refused to follow well worn standards - didn't have any well worn standards to follow - built code on top of hopelessly designed data structures - didn't understand deeply enough what was going on under the hood - built to requirements that changed too dramatically to recover from - didn't even consider the concerns of the "next" programmer But most of all: - was just good enough to get "something" (no matter how bad) deployed on time
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  All of those are absolutely true, and many of them reduce to one thing - didn't have a frickin' clue what the code was supposed to do I remember reading the old cartoon (and it was already old when I saw it 25 years ago) of the manager saying "You guys start writing code, I'll go find out what they want", and swearing I would never be that kind of manager only to find, all those years later, that many of my programmers had already internalized the notion and routinely sat down to write code without having a clear idea of what the block of code was supposed to accomplish.
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    You say that on a site where the ethos is "start building a company and product now, we'll figure out what it should do later" - because that's a way that works.
    - michael_dorfman 15y ago
      I think the ethos here is clearly different than you suggest. Trying to build a product without having an idea what it should do is not a way that works. Being open to refining your idea or pivoting as you go is a horse of a different color. But trying to write code without a clear purpose in mind is the equivalent of monkeys banging away at typewriters, to return to our "writing" metaphor.
tytso 15y ago
His theory might be true if you were only talking about writing a program from scratch. But programming is a lot more than that, because except for the smallest, most trivial exercises, programming is a team sport. Which means you need to be able to understand somebody else's code, and you also need to be able to modify it in a way that makes sense. You can have a program which is beautifully structured, and factored in an extremely clean way. But what happens when you have to modify it in response to a change in requirements? And what if you have external code that depends on the existing interfaces? At that point, the skills needed to be a good programmer are quite different from that of a writer.
- dchest 15y ago
  Ask a novelist about the pains they have when the extremely clean, excellent plot fails due to some small point, and they have to adjust it.
  - tytso 15y ago
    I can think of a number of novels where it's obvious some scenes got moved around for plot reasons, and their were continuity errors or other ways in which the seams showed. But novelists only have to deal with that for maybe a year or so; programmers have to deal with this problem for potentially decades, and at that point it's a completely different problem just because the scale is different.
    - cubicle67 15y ago
      I'm working my way through Stephen Donaldson's latest Thomas Convenant novel (book 9), a series he started writing in the 70's (first book published in '77). He expects to have the final book (book 10) completed by Fall 2013
mparr4 15y ago
To have good taste is one thing (the ability to recognize good from bad) but to be able to produce good work is another. As many good writers (and the author of this post) suggest, the best way to get better at writing is to read good writing and to write more. This method (of observing masters at work and practicing the craft yourself) works for many disciplines. Should it be surprising that it applies to hacking as well? The post reminded me of an Ira Glass interview where he comments on having good "taste" (5 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY which in turn reminds me of PGs essay "Great Hackers" http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html Good stuff!!
misuse-permit 15y ago
This is a decent analogy, but still I cringe whenever I hear someone comparing computer languages to spoken ones. They are nothing alike, and I would be honestly surprised if we even used the same part of our brain for processing the grammars of human languages as we do for the rigid, formal computer ones. If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become fluent in other spoken languages?
- parfe 15y ago
  >If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become fluent in other spoken languages? Why doesn't Mark Twain have any novels written in French? Why would you hold computer programmers to a greater standard than any of the great authors?
- skidooer 15y ago
  > how come not all great programmers are great writers? I imagine most programmers are great writers from a structural point of view. The rest is emotion. Programmers know how to appeal to machines, but often are not able to connect with people in the same way; something that extends beyond writing, if stereotypes are any indication.
DasIch 15y ago
I find it fascinating that Python seems to be the only language which created a word to describe idiomatic code: pythonic. Having learned Python as a first programming language I always try to gain an idiomatic understanding of the language which allows myself to think in Python.
- regularfry 15y ago
  Rubyish, perlesque, lispy are all words I've come across.
  - RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
    I've also heard 'Forthy'.
- dchest 15y ago
  Other languages call such code... idiomatic :-)
ignifero 15y ago
Programming is a compressed form of serial semantic thinking. It requires the same brain structures as math and language, so it's similar to writing, except it's more specialized and more restrictive. It's also very effective
moioci 15y ago
This discussion brings to mind Robert Lefkowitz's Pycon keynote from 2007 on Programming Literacy, very similar to this video from Stanford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8. He is definitely an advocate of literate programming and basically says we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code.
- hxa7241 15y ago
  > we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code. Anyone thinking along those lines needs to read Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW... (and maybe tack this on too: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html ).
ansy 15y ago
I actually subscribe to the theory put forth in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html#%_chap_1 http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html#... Essentially, "computer science" is a myopic name for what is really "process studies." It just so happens that defining processes to run on computers is forwarding the field more than any other. But in the distant future we will all understand the field to be about abstractly defining processes i.e. a series of repeatable steps to accomplish a task. Which would be independent of the mechanism used to execute the process. Therefore programming is the act of defining a process. And programming languages are what we use to define them. It is covered fairly intuitively in the first few minutes of the SICP video lectures as well: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5546836985338782440 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5546836985338782440
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Essentially, "computer science" is a myopic name for what is really "process studies." Actually the name isn't myopic at all. Computers are basically entities that follow instructions. There was a time when the definition for the word computer was a person who did computation processes.
  - vdm 15y ago
    James Gleick's The Information has a good description of those people, and is a great read otherwise as well. http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729 http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/03...
- equark 15y ago
  Emergency manuals for airplanes read like computer programs but are executed by humans.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  processes == algorithms, right? Doesn't seem very mind-blowing to me.
- 15y ago
ctdonath 15y ago
He is exactly right. As a beginning-programming instructor, my students have little difficulty understanding language syntax and operation - much like the "language lawyers" mentioned. Their recurring problem is not correct syntax, it's internalizing the process of expressing a solution to a problem using that syntax. They have few unto no examples of what a program - a real, functioning, well written program - looks like. Indeed, programming is writing: it's expressing the solution to a problem using a formalized language. Understanding how the program works is one thing (and yes, all too often this is a problem); a good program also expresses why. A 3 year old writing a novel won't succeed because, despite the ability to speak, he does not comprehend the process of concocting and presenting the story; all he knows is the minimum needed to just read one. He's not going to write good novels until he reads lots of good novels, and groks the literary structure and process of having and expressing an idea. Ditto programming: students may know the syntax, but they don't grasp the notion of "writing" because they haven't seen any decent examples. Rosettacode.org may be a good starting place. Thanks for the article, I may finally have identified the gap in my teaching. Now to find concise examples to fill it with, as the curriculum does not allocate copious time for reading lots of coding examples. Anyone have links to good examples for beginners regarding fundamental concepts? I don't mean syntax (I teach that well enough), I mean elegant uses akin to poetry or short stories. IOCCC (a moment of reverent silence for greatness ended) has wonderful examples of cool things in minimal code, but commands obfuscation. Anything akin to IOCCC for good readable nifty code?
- simplify 15y ago
  How long have you been teaching programming, and how did you get into it? I'm very interesting in teaching beginner programming for a while now, as I'm completely unsatisfied with my "top 10 in CS" university's shallow approach. If you could drop me an email (in my profile), that'd be great.
- enjalot 15y ago
  I don't think this is what you are looking for, but when you said poetry it came to mind http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M1SJtT_4Bb4J:artifex.org/~hblanks/talks/2011/pep20_by_example.html+zen+of+python&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M1SJtT_... (the original seems to be down)
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
> Japan is somewhat famous for churning out students who know a lot about English, but can't order a drink at Mac Donald's. An old friend of mine had a master's degree in French literature. She used to live in Ottawa, Ontario and was fond of a pizza place just across the river in Hull, Quebec. One day she called to order a pizza, and when it came time to ask for it to be delivered she realized she didn't know how. She asked if the pizza place could put the pizza into a car and drive to her house with it. The order taker replied, "Oui, delivery. Nous pouvons le faire."
- glhaynes 15y ago
  Translation?
  - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
    "Yes, delivery. We can do it." Edit: - I should point out that the French word for delivery is livraison; but like most languages, day-to-day Quebecois French is porous enough to borrow words from other languages where expedience warrants. Hence le week-end (not le fin-de-semaine), frencher (to French kiss), etc. As a further digression, I should point out that it seems less common (i.e. less acceptable) to drop anglicisms into informal Quebec French than in Europe, where native French speakers do not feel threatened by a dominant continental Anglo culture. I was amused on a recent trip to France to learn that the French word for wifi is "wifi" (pronounced wee-fee). Since wifi is short for "wireless fidelity", a more canonical French term would be something like fidélité sans fil.
    - ubernostrum 15y ago
      Of course, the French Academy tries to crack down on this; I remember cases like trying to push out "email" in favor of the native "courrier électronique" (literally: "electronic mail").
      - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
        AFAIK in Quebec the preferred term is "courriel", which is a portmanteau of "courrier électronique" in the same manner that "email" is a portmanteau of "electronic mail". (Funny that we're talking about Anglicisms in French, given the vast number of English words of French origin - like "portmanteau".)
losethos 15y ago
The truth is, all of you call all code written by someone else bad because understanding code is mentally painful. Stick with the code for a while and you'll start liking it more. Any code you don't understand is "bad". Every single programmer, even with only 1 year experience is heavily opinionated and reckons himself a guru. Everybody God damn programmer thinks he's a guru! Once you're not a newbie programmer, you'll stop complaining about all the minor formatting issues and stuff. A seasoned programmer follows, "When in Rome, do as the Romans."
hxa7241 15y ago
Saying programming is writing is like saying building something is 'speaking to materials'. When you look at software, what you see is not a language, it is a machine. A machine that is presented in humanly understandable and communicable form, but nonetheless, something with a particular kind of underlying determinate structure. Yes, the main part of the conclusion is the same: you have to learn by doing. But because software is design -- rational manipulation of objective 'material' -- knowledge about how it works is also an intrinsic part of doing it well. Design means creating something through clear knowledge: we go with particular design ideas because we can predict their outcome and effect. This is the knowledge about that the article underestimates. We choose quicksort not simply because we have immersed ourselves in social norms, but significantly because it has been proven asymptotically fastest. That kind of determinate knowledge that programming by nature can have is important. It is missing something to lump it in as just being like spoken language learning.
stevenj 15y ago
I think good writing is conversational in nature. I don't think writing code works that way.
- chriserin 15y ago
  Way to take this conversational thread out of the analogy! Its an analogy that is instructional but clearly not applicable for all writing. I hope to never see code that looks like a Faulkner novel, for example.
Cyranix 15y ago
"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." -- Edsger Dijkstra As a programmer coming from a linguistics background, this sentiment has always resonated with me. As much as math is a part of my job, recognizing the transferrable skills from human language use has probably been the primary reason that I've been able to land programming jobs and write fairly successful code.
kylemathews 15y ago
I spent two years living in a foreign country learning a new language (my first foreign language) immediately before I started learning to program and it's always struck me how similar the two experiences are. All good communication comes first from good thinking. Whether or not we can communicate in a certain medium (speaking a language, writing, painting, music, programming) depends entirely on how fluently we can translate our thoughts into that medium. So good thinking + good understanding of programming concepts = good code.
dennyferra 15y ago
The only problem I see with this is when Bob, David, Mike and Steve have their own ideas about writing a story and take your love story then turn it into a science fiction novel about aliens, cowboys, race cars and heavy metal.
raghava 15y ago
Isn't this the same thing Bruce Eckel wrote a couple of years ago? http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=255898 http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=255898
Zeus-TheTrueGod 15y ago
I've read the article. I am sure that when a new child is born he has, say, a 5% chance to have an ability to be a programmer. After the lucky one grown up he will get all required information and experience just because he has the ability and finally, say in 10 years, will be a good programmer. Other 95% may do everything they want, they can learn how to program, read a lot of books, do all their homework and hobby project, but they will grow up only to the certain level. I want to believe in what I've just wrote cause that guarantee that I will not have a lot of competitors and I'll always have a job when I want
Create 15y ago
... and "code should read like prose". this is an old idea.
pasbesoin 15y ago
This makes me think of people who would try to "memorize" for e.g. science tests. They were ok as long as they could plug and chug, but they couldn't derive anything on the spot. I'm wary of tickling my ego, but I recall not entirely seldom forgetting a formula, and so simply starting with other stuff and deriving it in the margin or on scratch paper. I think many of the instructors liked that, as well, as it showed a more conceptual grasp.
nikils 15y ago
Literate Programing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming ?
- sunstone 15y ago
  Everything old is new again. :)
pfedor 15y ago
When you've learned two subjects with some depth, you start seeing some analogies. Paul Graham thinks that hacking is very much like painting, and this guy thinks that writing code is like writing English, and at one point in my life I believed that coding in Perl has a lot in common with calculating cross sections. That doesn't really mean that these things are any more similar than two random areas of human activity. Our brains are just good at finding analogies, finding analogies is like spotting patterns, we see them even when there aren't any and when there actually are some their appeal is difficult to overcome. And if you know two subjects well you have more material to cherrypick analogous things from.
cschep 15y ago
I like the author's premise. It's hard to find good writing that hasn't been rewritten.. a lot. That seems true to me about code as well. Perhaps we're seeing a lot of "rough draft" code being pushed to production. Novels never get published like that (hopefully!).
losethos 15y ago
Perhaps, there is a correllation between good writing and good coding. If so, it might be a clue for hiring.
RandyHelzerman 15y ago
I don't think they are the same thing at all. I've been practicing literate programming for a decade now, but my brain still has to switch gears when I go from writing up the English-language description of an algorithm to writing the algorithm. A good description of what an algorithm does (e.g. "This function finds the largest subset of edges in the graph which could be removed without disconnecting the graph") is very very different from the code which does that, and requires very very different kinds of thought.
gte910h 15y ago
I disagree. Programming definitely requires writing skills (expressiveness and concision most importantly) However it's about structurally combining that writing into maintainable code, using idioms of the past to build upon to gain error free use. It's about mentally modeling what parts of the machine are doing, and correctly understanding those interactions. It's about risk assessment, experimentation, knowing when to call something quits. It's about going back over old world to do it a better way. It's about decomposing a complex process into many simpler steps. It's about reading, reading lots in fact, usually reading to find out details of the bits of your mental models. Programming really isn't anything other than programming. It's not any field like it or near to it that knowing a nearby field plays well into it (electrical engineers can make horrible programmers but brilliant electronics guys same goes for web designers), but lots of other skills parlay well into getting you partway into the panoply of skills that get you past the finish line. People make bad programs code when they only have part of those skills (or when they do not put out the effort to use the skills they have, due to time or willpower restraints). Another reason some programs suck: they picked the wrong problem to code.
deleted 15y ago
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saraid216 15y ago
I agree with him. As kylematthews points out, it's not about the substance of the thing--capturing an audience, I/O calls, or anything like that. It's about communication. Communication is about translating something conceptual inside your own head to become understandable by something (usually a person) outside of it. The way we do this is by language. A programming language is merely the way we communicate with a computer. To do it right, you need to understand the parts of the computer that you want to change. It's not a mistake that we used to call impressive coding "wizardry" or "deep magic". It was about casting spells... except that if you actually step to the side and look at what "spell" means, it's simply a story. A good program tells a good story. You might not appreciate the characters or the plot, but the computer sure does.
yuhong 15y ago
That is particularly important in connection to management techniques. Programmers are not dumb automata.
voxmatt 15y ago
Wait, SlashDot is still around?
delinquentme 15y ago
"We should be immersing students in good code. We should be burying them in idiom after idiom after idiom, allowing them to acquire the ability to program without explanation." ^ bingo.
aznwhtey 15y ago
>We should be immersing students in good code. We should be burying them in idiom after idiom after idiom, allowing them to acquire the ability to program without explanation. Does anyone have suggestions of some good code to read?
- dunstad 15y ago
  You'll probably have the best luck dissecting a program you're interested in.
7952 15y ago
No, its a kind of data. It has more in common with a spreadsheet than a novel. And like a spreadsheet you can get yourself into lots of trouble if you don't format the data in a way that suits the tool you are using.
c00p3r 15y ago
It is known from an ancient times, that knowing a language does not make you a poet. Programming is like writing poetry - to put a known words in a some special order. We all know those words, but very few can manage that order without losing the meaning. The second big thing is the difference between understanding and realization. Most people have understood something more or less, but very few have their own realization. There is huge literature on the subject. And the big picture is very simple - the phenomena discribed is called the lack of practice. The major fallacy is that you cannot compensate the lack of practice by studying (reading HN) more theories. I know that, because I was suspended exactly for lack of practice in English, co I cannot convey my views and put my opinions in pleasant words. Reading and writing is two very different cognitive tasks.. So, they think I'm a troll. That is how it works.
ryanisinallofus 15y ago
Exactly! Writing. Copyrightable but not patentable. :)
mironathetin 15y ago
I don't think that I can agree with the op on slashdot. Programming is not about knowing lots of words or grammar. It is about getting the thoughts clearly structured and understanding quickly what a problem is really about. THIS is quite the same problem as writing text. But, IMHO, the author approached this as someone who does not know how to write text, too. Its not about ingenuous choice of words and correct application of grammar. It is about clarity of understanding the problem and then find a solution how to get to the point clearly and quickly. If a solution is in the mind, 70% of the way is gone. Then it is important not to give up unless this idea is on paper in the same shape as it was in the head before. So I think the analogy is a good one, but the op has not necessarily found the reasons why.
NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago
Of COURSE. Why would anyone think anything else? For more, let's start with source code. Suppose we have source code line a = b*c Reading this line, we want to know what it does and check that it's correct. So, we need to know what the line 'means'. But, we conclude that a = b*c doesn't really mean anything. Of course if we saw F = m*a we might guess that the variable names were mnemonic and guess Newton's second law that force equals mass times acceleration. Okay, now we know what the line means and can check if it's correct. Okay, we are beginning to see: A line of code such as a = b*c doesn't mean anything. So, we have nothing to read and no way to check. So, we don't have anything. We could write F = m*a and begin to guess what this means. But we are still in trouble: We still have no good way to communicate meaning to permit understanding or checking. So, we have to ask, F = m*a came from physics books, and what did those books do? Well, they wrote in a natural language, say, English. Always, an equation such as F = m*a was just an abbreviation of what was said in English. And, in particular, from the English there was no question about the meaning of each of the variables. Net, math, and science with math, are written in complete sentences in a natural language. The variables are all clearly defined, discussed, explained, etc. At no time is an algebraic expression of such variables regarded as a substitute for the natural language. Take a physics book, throwout the English and leave just the equations, and will have nothing. Physics and math understand; so far computing does not. So computing tries to write force = mass*acceleration or some such and omit the English. For simple things, can get by this way. Otherwise, this approach is hopeless, at best presents the reader a puzzle problem of guessing. The matter of using mnemonic variable names as parts of speech in English is a grand mistake but common in writing in computer science. Bummer. Bluntly computing has not figured out that there is so far just one way to communicate meaning: Use complete sentences in a natural language. Period. That's all we've got. But computing has fooled itself into believing that algebraic expressions with mnemonic variable names form a 'new language' that, in computer source code, can provide the needed meaning without a natural language. Wrong. For F = m*a the situation is simple. But significant source code has much more complicated cases of 'meaning' to communicate. Again, computing tries to get by, say, using a big library of software classes, relying the mnemonic spelling of the classes and members and the documentation of the classes. In simple cases, can get by this way. But fundamentally, for some complicated code, the meaning, workings, etc. just must be explained, and there's only one way to do this: Complete sentences. So, writing these complete sentences to communicate meaning effectively is 'writing'. Done!

513 points by damncabbage 15y ago

Actually the article is missing one thing. Yes, you need to be able to express yourself in the (programming) language. But, and here is the thing, the hard part is not learning the words and the grammar, nor actually writing in the language using the said words and grammar. No the hard problem is figuring out WHAT to say and HOW say it to make others (humans or computers, depending if it is a natural or programming language). In terms if human language it is about formulating a narrative story that presents the problem and the solution to the reader. In terms of programming language it is about describing the data structures, data transformations and transactions/communications needed to perform the task. This is the hard part and that is what separates good writers and good programmers from their lousy counterparts. BTW: I hope this was parseable.

dchest 15y ago
I don't think this is missing from the article, it's actually what the author said. If you only learn the words and the grammar, without seeing how they are used to express things (and without trying to express things), you won't learn foreign language/programming.
DasIch 15y ago
I'm pretty sure that's what he meant.

larrik 15y ago

I think he's right. In college, my CS 2 class was taught by a professor very different than the rest of the teachers there. He wanted all of your programming assignments on paper[1]. Then, you'd get it back with every possible bug marked in your program, and he very rarely missed any[2]. That was the first time in college I thought "I really need to learn how to do that!" I went to a state school, so maybe all you guys with your degrees from fancy schools wouldn't be that impressed, but the difference between this professor and the rest there was gigantic. (He retired that year in a round of state-wide budget cuts, so that's the last class I had him.) [1] A lot of the other teachers wanted you to hand in binaries so they can see it run. Sometimes with the code, sometimes not. [2] I actually don't know of any case where he did, but I'm not saying "never."

klbarry 15y ago
From what I've heard, professors in prestigious schools aren't any better at teaching. They're hired for their prestige and research ability.
- timtadh 15y ago
  All true facts unfortunately. To get better teachers you have to attend a "teaching" college/university. This name is detrimental, as most students would probably be happier at such a place. The "research" university really isn't for everyone but they get the most prestige and people think, oh I should go there learn from the "brightest mind in the field".
  - alexgartrell 15y ago
    The value of Stanford, MIT, CMU, etc. isn't that the professors are so good at teaching; it's that they are smart student aggregators. Nothing motivates you like not being the smart one anymore.
    - BrandonM 15y ago
      That might be true of some people. For someone coming from a small town where everyone told him that he would go on to do amazing, wonderful things, it can be very depressing for him to learn that he is nothing special.
      - alexgartrell 15y ago
        That's more of a feature than a bug. The opposite can be true too, I expected to get tanked at CMU and did pretty well (3.65 gpa, senior thesis, going to Facebook). If I'd gone to Ohio State like the majority of my peers from High School (Hilliard Darby High School has sent a whopping two people to top tier engineering schools (CMU and MIT) and none to Harvard) and even gotten a 4.0, I never would have believed I was more than a "talented state school kid." At the end of the day, it's on you to put yourself in the most challenging situation you can possibly survive so that you can learn the most. Sheltering one's fragile ego never did much for anyone in the long run.

johnnyjustice 15y ago

He is right. Good writing is sussicint, concise, and says a lot with a little. Good programming is clear and does a lot with a little.

corin_ 15y ago
In some cases good writing says a lot with a little, but by no means is that always a requirement for good writing.

6ren 15y ago

So what's good example code? Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it. This is made worse because it's hard to tell if code is necessarily complex without understanding the problem it solves, which may be complex. Further, if you don't yet know what good code is, how can you recognize it? Of course, if you are intelligent and reflective and try ideas out, you can learn from both code and bad - it's all raw material, grist for the mill. IMHO the hard part of programming is understanding the problem to be solved. The solving is easy.

dchest 15y ago
Sadly (and tellingly) it's not necessarily the most successful code (success comes from meeting user needs, not from good code), but how else can you judge it, apart from reading it. Schools have suggested reading lists. Do they have the same for code reading? Fortunately, on the Internet, we have experienced people to help us: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22good+code+to+read%22&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22good+cod...
- 6ren 15y ago
  > [suggested code reading lists] That's a good idea, but I haven't heard of one. I think the best thing is just to read a lot of code, good and bad. BTW did you check the result of that search?
  - dchest 15y ago
    BTW did you check the result of that search? Haha, just skimmed through it, sorry. I remember threads on this topic, but it seems like HN search for this request failed to find them.
- cturner 15y ago
  Interesting. You could teach blocks of code in a similar manner to the way poetry is taught. "Why did the author do this?" "What effect do you get when reading this block?"

VMG 15y ago

I'm a little suspect if this analogy goes beyond "theoretical understanding without practical experience is worthless". You could draw a similar analogy between architects who know everything about architecture but don't know how to design proper buildings because they have no experience. Or painter who knows everything about technique but can't paint a horse and so on. It is easy to find differences between good writing and good code: Uniformity in code is good, while uniformity in prose is bad. In writing, a large vocabulary is an advantage, it's difficult to see if that is the case in language. In programming, proper abstractions are essential while I can't really see the equivalent of that in writing. As far as analogies go, I can't see how this one is much better than others.

regularfry 15y ago
Uniformity in code is bad - it tells you that there's a common concern or pattern which should be factored out. Uniformity in code style is essential, the same way it is for prose.
- VMG 15y ago
  Is it? In prose you say "first he rushed to the exit door, then he leaped down the stairs, finally he ran to get the train" while in programming it is better to write socket.close(); window.close(); file.close()
  - vorg 15y ago
    Better prose is: "He rushed to the exit, leaped down the stairs, and ran for the train." Better programming is to factor out the action: [socket, window, file]*.close()
    - jamesbritt 15y ago
      Indeed. Programming is more like writing math than natural language.
    - SlyShy 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago

Programming isn't about writing. It's about logic. It's a series of instructions for a computer to follow. The old 'write down how to tie shoes' or 'write down how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich' projects show just how hard it can be to pin down exactly what needs to be done to do seemingly simple tasks. The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic.

damncabbage 15y ago
The writing is merely how to you transmit the logic. The author of the post seems to me to be saying that, given that logic of a great number of programs can be pretty simple, the way you express the logic becomes more of a concern. Take the following: @post.comments Compare it to: $this->post->findDependentRowset('Comment'); Both mean the same thing, but the latter seems like the programming equivalent of purple prose by comparison.
MediaBehavior 15y ago
And is not (good) writing also about logic - even though sometimes it's fuzzy or the (twisted) logic of human psychology? Writing requires "logicking out" the likely responses of the reader - and the pseudologic of parsing by the human brain (see Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions").
ignifero 15y ago
Are you not contradicting yourself here?
sp332 15y ago
Unless you're designing your own ICs and then programming them in machine code, there's some amount of logic and knowledge built-in already. I don't have to explain to the computer how to add two numbers together, or how to take a square root, or sort a list. It is necessary to understand the vocabulary that the computer already has. That's what OP meant by learning idioms: I can either painstakingly describe how to make a sandwich, or I can just say "make a PB&J" and you know what I mean.
mckoss 15y ago

vbtemp 15y ago

Oh come on. Programming is not writing. When you're reading a novel you don't have to worry about concurrent access to a resource, threads, asynchronous events, or even much less conditional branching. With all due respect, I think this is just an inane post. That said, I can't blame the guy for dropping software development and moving to Japan to teach ESL. I often entertain similar fantasies all the time - programming is a great way to have the zest for life sucked straight out of you Edit: Would someone have the courtesy to mention why they are downvoting?

tjogin 15y ago
And in programming you don't have to worry about capturing the audience, the development of the characters, the story arch, being clear but not being obvious, etc. Both in programming and writing, the actual writing part is the easiest part. And while bad programmers can make a program work, and bad writers can tell a story, it takes good ones to do it coherently, efficiently and enjoyably. It's not the exact same thing, which I don't think anyone is saying, but there are some similarities there, especially the aspect of writing readable code.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  They're not nearly the same thing. The scope of modern literature has hardly moved in hundreds of years. Compare Updike, Roth, or Mitchell to Dante or Shakespeare -- they'd seem like near contemporaries in programming. In contrast, in the past, programs to do Newtons method or compute trig tables were often the full scope of a program. You certainly never had a Halo 3, Windows 7, Google Search, or WordLens application written even 50 years ago. Good literature isn't about automating increasingly sophisticated processes. Programming is all about that. This leads to increasing complexity of programs, where the goal of software engineering is to abstract/hide as much of the complexity as possible. The only things they really share in common is that they're both written in text. If programs were written by soldering wires no one would make such odd acquisitions (do EE relate circuit design to writing literature?). I think we give this slashdot author far too much credit.
  - 15y ago

dpapathanasiou 15y ago

That reminded of this quote (I forget who said it): "Programs are written for humans to read, not for machines to execute"

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tree_of_item 15y ago
That was at the beginning of SICP.

david927 15y ago

It's a nice theory but I disagree. Programming languages are really just a poor effort towards a mathematical notation. There are those adept in theory that can't practice well, but that's because to practice the art means dealing with a plethora of hacks, exceptions and miscellaneous trivia completely unrelated to the core problem at hand. Personally, I don't think the answer is becoming 'fluent' in handling the exceptions and idiosyncrasies of the chosen language, framework and platform. Rather we need to work on building a notation that provides better abstraction mechanisms.

windsurfer 15y ago
How is mathematical notation different from a written language like English? It conveys meaning using glyphs, uses nouns and verbs (and even adjectives). It expresses all sorts of ideas. One might even say that math's notation is a poor effort towards English.
- david927 15y ago
  Language can be expressive in ambiguous ways, with multiple valid ways to express the same emotion. Notation should be definable, unambiguous, and precise. The fewer ways to express something, the better.
  - windsurfer 15y ago
    Why?: die unless $file; if (!$file){ die; } Which is neater? Should I not be able to write the first one?
    - absconditus 15y ago
      The problem is that the language becomes virtually unknowable. Perl has a ridiculous amount of syntax. I am sure that I could find half a dozen lines of Perl code that the average Perl developer would not understand because everyone only knows part of the language.

edw519 15y ago

Most code sucks because we have the fluency equivalent of 3 year olds trying to write a novel. Let's get a little more specific... Most code sucks because the programmer: - didn't name his variables what the really were - didn't understand variable state - didn't understand variable scope - didn't understand the basic concepts of iteration - didn't understand any of the algorithms he needed - wrote the same lines of code multiple times - didn't know enough about the language to find a better construct - didn't understand concurrency - didn't understand fundamental data base concepts - refused to follow well worn standards - didn't have any well worn standards to follow - built code on top of hopelessly designed data structures - didn't understand deeply enough what was going on under the hood - built to requirements that changed too dramatically to recover from - didn't even consider the concerns of the "next" programmer But most of all: - was just good enough to get "something" (no matter how bad) deployed on time

michael_dorfman 15y ago
All of those are absolutely true, and many of them reduce to one thing - didn't have a frickin' clue what the code was supposed to do I remember reading the old cartoon (and it was already old when I saw it 25 years ago) of the manager saying "You guys start writing code, I'll go find out what they want", and swearing I would never be that kind of manager only to find, all those years later, that many of my programmers had already internalized the notion and routinely sat down to write code without having a clear idea of what the block of code was supposed to accomplish.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  You say that on a site where the ethos is "start building a company and product now, we'll figure out what it should do later" - because that's a way that works.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    I think the ethos here is clearly different than you suggest. Trying to build a product without having an idea what it should do is not a way that works. Being open to refining your idea or pivoting as you go is a horse of a different color. But trying to write code without a clear purpose in mind is the equivalent of monkeys banging away at typewriters, to return to our "writing" metaphor.

tytso 15y ago

His theory might be true if you were only talking about writing a program from scratch. But programming is a lot more than that, because except for the smallest, most trivial exercises, programming is a team sport. Which means you need to be able to understand somebody else's code, and you also need to be able to modify it in a way that makes sense. You can have a program which is beautifully structured, and factored in an extremely clean way. But what happens when you have to modify it in response to a change in requirements? And what if you have external code that depends on the existing interfaces? At that point, the skills needed to be a good programmer are quite different from that of a writer.

dchest 15y ago
Ask a novelist about the pains they have when the extremely clean, excellent plot fails due to some small point, and they have to adjust it.
- tytso 15y ago
  I can think of a number of novels where it's obvious some scenes got moved around for plot reasons, and their were continuity errors or other ways in which the seams showed. But novelists only have to deal with that for maybe a year or so; programmers have to deal with this problem for potentially decades, and at that point it's a completely different problem just because the scale is different.
  - cubicle67 15y ago
    I'm working my way through Stephen Donaldson's latest Thomas Convenant novel (book 9), a series he started writing in the 70's (first book published in '77). He expects to have the final book (book 10) completed by Fall 2013

mparr4 15y ago

To have good taste is one thing (the ability to recognize good from bad) but to be able to produce good work is another. As many good writers (and the author of this post) suggest, the best way to get better at writing is to read good writing and to write more. This method (of observing masters at work and practicing the craft yourself) works for many disciplines. Should it be surprising that it applies to hacking as well? The post reminded me of an Ira Glass interview where he comments on having good "taste" (5 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY which in turn reminds me of PGs essay "Great Hackers" http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html Good stuff!!

misuse-permit 15y ago

This is a decent analogy, but still I cringe whenever I hear someone comparing computer languages to spoken ones. They are nothing alike, and I would be honestly surprised if we even used the same part of our brain for processing the grammars of human languages as we do for the rigid, formal computer ones. If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become fluent in other spoken languages?

parfe 15y ago
>If this were true, how come not all great programmers are great writers? Why don't more great programmers become fluent in other spoken languages? Why doesn't Mark Twain have any novels written in French? Why would you hold computer programmers to a greater standard than any of the great authors?
skidooer 15y ago
> how come not all great programmers are great writers? I imagine most programmers are great writers from a structural point of view. The rest is emotion. Programmers know how to appeal to machines, but often are not able to connect with people in the same way; something that extends beyond writing, if stereotypes are any indication.

DasIch 15y ago

I find it fascinating that Python seems to be the only language which created a word to describe idiomatic code: pythonic. Having learned Python as a first programming language I always try to gain an idiomatic understanding of the language which allows myself to think in Python.

regularfry 15y ago
Rubyish, perlesque, lispy are all words I've come across.
- RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
  I've also heard 'Forthy'.
dchest 15y ago
Other languages call such code... idiomatic :-)

ignifero 15y ago

Programming is a compressed form of serial semantic thinking. It requires the same brain structures as math and language, so it's similar to writing, except it's more specialized and more restrictive. It's also very effective

moioci 15y ago

This discussion brings to mind Robert Lefkowitz's Pycon keynote from 2007 on Programming Literacy, very similar to this video from Stanford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8. He is definitely an advocate of literate programming and basically says we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code.

hxa7241 15y ago
> we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code. Anyone thinking along those lines needs to read Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW... (and maybe tack this on too: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html ).

ansy 15y ago

I actually subscribe to the theory put forth in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html#%_chap_1 http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html#... Essentially, "computer science" is a myopic name for what is really "process studies." It just so happens that defining processes to run on computers is forwarding the field more than any other. But in the distant future we will all understand the field to be about abstractly defining processes i.e. a series of repeatable steps to accomplish a task. Which would be independent of the mechanism used to execute the process. Therefore programming is the act of defining a process. And programming languages are what we use to define them. It is covered fairly intuitively in the first few minutes of the SICP video lectures as well: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5546836985338782440 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5546836985338782440

kenjackson 15y ago
Essentially, "computer science" is a myopic name for what is really "process studies." Actually the name isn't myopic at all. Computers are basically entities that follow instructions. There was a time when the definition for the word computer was a person who did computation processes.
- vdm 15y ago
  James Gleick's The Information has a good description of those people, and is a great read otherwise as well. http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729 http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/03...
equark 15y ago
Emergency manuals for airplanes read like computer programs but are executed by humans.
mattdeboard 15y ago
processes == algorithms, right? Doesn't seem very mind-blowing to me.
15y ago

ctdonath 15y ago

He is exactly right. As a beginning-programming instructor, my students have little difficulty understanding language syntax and operation - much like the "language lawyers" mentioned. Their recurring problem is not correct syntax, it's internalizing the process of expressing a solution to a problem using that syntax. They have few unto no examples of what a program - a real, functioning, well written program - looks like. Indeed, programming is writing: it's expressing the solution to a problem using a formalized language. Understanding how the program works is one thing (and yes, all too often this is a problem); a good program also expresses why. A 3 year old writing a novel won't succeed because, despite the ability to speak, he does not comprehend the process of concocting and presenting the story; all he knows is the minimum needed to just read one. He's not going to write good novels until he reads lots of good novels, and groks the literary structure and process of having and expressing an idea. Ditto programming: students may know the syntax, but they don't grasp the notion of "writing" because they haven't seen any decent examples. Rosettacode.org may be a good starting place. Thanks for the article, I may finally have identified the gap in my teaching. Now to find concise examples to fill it with, as the curriculum does not allocate copious time for reading lots of coding examples. Anyone have links to good examples for beginners regarding fundamental concepts? I don't mean syntax (I teach that well enough), I mean elegant uses akin to poetry or short stories. IOCCC (a moment of reverent silence for greatness ended) has wonderful examples of cool things in minimal code, but commands obfuscation. Anything akin to IOCCC for good readable nifty code?

simplify 15y ago
How long have you been teaching programming, and how did you get into it? I'm very interesting in teaching beginner programming for a while now, as I'm completely unsatisfied with my "top 10 in CS" university's shallow approach. If you could drop me an email (in my profile), that'd be great.
enjalot 15y ago
I don't think this is what you are looking for, but when you said poetry it came to mind http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M1SJtT_4Bb4J:artifex.org/~hblanks/talks/2011/pep20_by_example.html+zen+of+python&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M1SJtT_... (the original seems to be down)

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

> Japan is somewhat famous for churning out students who know a lot about English, but can't order a drink at Mac Donald's. An old friend of mine had a master's degree in French literature. She used to live in Ottawa, Ontario and was fond of a pizza place just across the river in Hull, Quebec. One day she called to order a pizza, and when it came time to ask for it to be delivered she realized she didn't know how. She asked if the pizza place could put the pizza into a car and drive to her house with it. The order taker replied, "Oui, delivery. Nous pouvons le faire."

glhaynes 15y ago
Translation?
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  "Yes, delivery. We can do it." Edit: - I should point out that the French word for delivery is livraison; but like most languages, day-to-day Quebecois French is porous enough to borrow words from other languages where expedience warrants. Hence le week-end (not le fin-de-semaine), frencher (to French kiss), etc. As a further digression, I should point out that it seems less common (i.e. less acceptable) to drop anglicisms into informal Quebec French than in Europe, where native French speakers do not feel threatened by a dominant continental Anglo culture. I was amused on a recent trip to France to learn that the French word for wifi is "wifi" (pronounced wee-fee). Since wifi is short for "wireless fidelity", a more canonical French term would be something like fidélité sans fil.
  - ubernostrum 15y ago
    Of course, the French Academy tries to crack down on this; I remember cases like trying to push out "email" in favor of the native "courrier électronique" (literally: "electronic mail").
    - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
      AFAIK in Quebec the preferred term is "courriel", which is a portmanteau of "courrier électronique" in the same manner that "email" is a portmanteau of "electronic mail". (Funny that we're talking about Anglicisms in French, given the vast number of English words of French origin - like "portmanteau".)

losethos 15y ago

The truth is, all of you call all code written by someone else bad because understanding code is mentally painful. Stick with the code for a while and you'll start liking it more. Any code you don't understand is "bad". Every single programmer, even with only 1 year experience is heavily opinionated and reckons himself a guru. Everybody God damn programmer thinks he's a guru! Once you're not a newbie programmer, you'll stop complaining about all the minor formatting issues and stuff. A seasoned programmer follows, "When in Rome, do as the Romans."

hxa7241 15y ago

Saying programming is writing is like saying building something is 'speaking to materials'. When you look at software, what you see is not a language, it is a machine. A machine that is presented in humanly understandable and communicable form, but nonetheless, something with a particular kind of underlying determinate structure. Yes, the main part of the conclusion is the same: you have to learn by doing. But because software is design -- rational manipulation of objective 'material' -- knowledge about how it works is also an intrinsic part of doing it well. Design means creating something through clear knowledge: we go with particular design ideas because we can predict their outcome and effect. This is the knowledge about that the article underestimates. We choose quicksort not simply because we have immersed ourselves in social norms, but significantly because it has been proven asymptotically fastest. That kind of determinate knowledge that programming by nature can have is important. It is missing something to lump it in as just being like spoken language learning.

stevenj 15y ago

I think good writing is conversational in nature. I don't think writing code works that way.

chriserin 15y ago
Way to take this conversational thread out of the analogy! Its an analogy that is instructional but clearly not applicable for all writing. I hope to never see code that looks like a Faulkner novel, for example.

Cyranix 15y ago

"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." -- Edsger Dijkstra As a programmer coming from a linguistics background, this sentiment has always resonated with me. As much as math is a part of my job, recognizing the transferrable skills from human language use has probably been the primary reason that I've been able to land programming jobs and write fairly successful code.

kylemathews 15y ago

I spent two years living in a foreign country learning a new language (my first foreign language) immediately before I started learning to program and it's always struck me how similar the two experiences are. All good communication comes first from good thinking. Whether or not we can communicate in a certain medium (speaking a language, writing, painting, music, programming) depends entirely on how fluently we can translate our thoughts into that medium. So good thinking + good understanding of programming concepts = good code.

dennyferra 15y ago

The only problem I see with this is when Bob, David, Mike and Steve have their own ideas about writing a story and take your love story then turn it into a science fiction novel about aliens, cowboys, race cars and heavy metal.

raghava 15y ago

Isn't this the same thing Bruce Eckel wrote a couple of years ago? http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=255898 http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=255898

Zeus-TheTrueGod 15y ago

I've read the article. I am sure that when a new child is born he has, say, a 5% chance to have an ability to be a programmer. After the lucky one grown up he will get all required information and experience just because he has the ability and finally, say in 10 years, will be a good programmer. Other 95% may do everything they want, they can learn how to program, read a lot of books, do all their homework and hobby project, but they will grow up only to the certain level. I want to believe in what I've just wrote cause that guarantee that I will not have a lot of competitors and I'll always have a job when I want

Create 15y ago

... and "code should read like prose". this is an old idea.

pasbesoin 15y ago

This makes me think of people who would try to "memorize" for e.g. science tests. They were ok as long as they could plug and chug, but they couldn't derive anything on the spot. I'm wary of tickling my ego, but I recall not entirely seldom forgetting a formula, and so simply starting with other stuff and deriving it in the margin or on scratch paper. I think many of the instructors liked that, as well, as it showed a more conceptual grasp.

nikils 15y ago

Literate Programing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming ?

sunstone 15y ago
Everything old is new again. :)

pfedor 15y ago

When you've learned two subjects with some depth, you start seeing some analogies. Paul Graham thinks that hacking is very much like painting, and this guy thinks that writing code is like writing English, and at one point in my life I believed that coding in Perl has a lot in common with calculating cross sections. That doesn't really mean that these things are any more similar than two random areas of human activity. Our brains are just good at finding analogies, finding analogies is like spotting patterns, we see them even when there aren't any and when there actually are some their appeal is difficult to overcome. And if you know two subjects well you have more material to cherrypick analogous things from.

cschep 15y ago

I like the author's premise. It's hard to find good writing that hasn't been rewritten.. a lot. That seems true to me about code as well. Perhaps we're seeing a lot of "rough draft" code being pushed to production. Novels never get published like that (hopefully!).

losethos 15y ago

Perhaps, there is a correllation between good writing and good coding. If so, it might be a clue for hiring.

RandyHelzerman 15y ago

I don't think they are the same thing at all. I've been practicing literate programming for a decade now, but my brain still has to switch gears when I go from writing up the English-language description of an algorithm to writing the algorithm. A good description of what an algorithm does (e.g. "This function finds the largest subset of edges in the graph which could be removed without disconnecting the graph") is very very different from the code which does that, and requires very very different kinds of thought.

gte910h 15y ago

I disagree. Programming definitely requires writing skills (expressiveness and concision most importantly) However it's about structurally combining that writing into maintainable code, using idioms of the past to build upon to gain error free use. It's about mentally modeling what parts of the machine are doing, and correctly understanding those interactions. It's about risk assessment, experimentation, knowing when to call something quits. It's about going back over old world to do it a better way. It's about decomposing a complex process into many simpler steps. It's about reading, reading lots in fact, usually reading to find out details of the bits of your mental models. Programming really isn't anything other than programming. It's not any field like it or near to it that knowing a nearby field plays well into it (electrical engineers can make horrible programmers but brilliant electronics guys same goes for web designers), but lots of other skills parlay well into getting you partway into the panoply of skills that get you past the finish line. People make bad programs code when they only have part of those skills (or when they do not put out the effort to use the skills they have, due to time or willpower restraints). Another reason some programs suck: they picked the wrong problem to code.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

saraid216 15y ago

I agree with him. As kylematthews points out, it's not about the substance of the thing--capturing an audience, I/O calls, or anything like that. It's about communication. Communication is about translating something conceptual inside your own head to become understandable by something (usually a person) outside of it. The way we do this is by language. A programming language is merely the way we communicate with a computer. To do it right, you need to understand the parts of the computer that you want to change. It's not a mistake that we used to call impressive coding "wizardry" or "deep magic". It was about casting spells... except that if you actually step to the side and look at what "spell" means, it's simply a story. A good program tells a good story. You might not appreciate the characters or the plot, but the computer sure does.

yuhong 15y ago

That is particularly important in connection to management techniques. Programmers are not dumb automata.

voxmatt 15y ago

Wait, SlashDot is still around?

delinquentme 15y ago

"We should be immersing students in good code. We should be burying them in idiom after idiom after idiom, allowing them to acquire the ability to program without explanation." ^ bingo.

aznwhtey 15y ago

>We should be immersing students in good code. We should be burying them in idiom after idiom after idiom, allowing them to acquire the ability to program without explanation. Does anyone have suggestions of some good code to read?

dunstad 15y ago
You'll probably have the best luck dissecting a program you're interested in.

7952 15y ago

No, its a kind of data. It has more in common with a spreadsheet than a novel. And like a spreadsheet you can get yourself into lots of trouble if you don't format the data in a way that suits the tool you are using.

c00p3r 15y ago

It is known from an ancient times, that knowing a language does not make you a poet. Programming is like writing poetry - to put a known words in a some special order. We all know those words, but very few can manage that order without losing the meaning. The second big thing is the difference between understanding and realization. Most people have understood something more or less, but very few have their own realization. There is huge literature on the subject. And the big picture is very simple - the phenomena discribed is called the lack of practice. The major fallacy is that you cannot compensate the lack of practice by studying (reading HN) more theories. I know that, because I was suspended exactly for lack of practice in English, co I cannot convey my views and put my opinions in pleasant words. Reading and writing is two very different cognitive tasks.. So, they think I'm a troll. That is how it works.

ryanisinallofus 15y ago

Exactly! Writing. Copyrightable but not patentable. :)

mironathetin 15y ago

I don't think that I can agree with the op on slashdot. Programming is not about knowing lots of words or grammar. It is about getting the thoughts clearly structured and understanding quickly what a problem is really about. THIS is quite the same problem as writing text. But, IMHO, the author approached this as someone who does not know how to write text, too. Its not about ingenuous choice of words and correct application of grammar. It is about clarity of understanding the problem and then find a solution how to get to the point clearly and quickly. If a solution is in the mind, 70% of the way is gone. Then it is important not to give up unless this idea is on paper in the same shape as it was in the head before. So I think the analogy is a good one, but the op has not necessarily found the reasons why.

NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago

Of COURSE. Why would anyone think anything else? For more, let's start with source code. Suppose we have source code line a = b*c Reading this line, we want to know what it does and check that it's correct. So, we need to know what the line 'means'. But, we conclude that a = b*c doesn't really mean anything. Of course if we saw F = m*a we might guess that the variable names were mnemonic and guess Newton's second law that force equals mass times acceleration. Okay, now we know what the line means and can check if it's correct. Okay, we are beginning to see: A line of code such as a = b*c doesn't mean anything. So, we have nothing to read and no way to check. So, we don't have anything. We could write F = m*a and begin to guess what this means. But we are still in trouble: We still have no good way to communicate meaning to permit understanding or checking. So, we have to ask, F = m*a came from physics books, and what did those books do? Well, they wrote in a natural language, say, English. Always, an equation such as F = m*a was just an abbreviation of what was said in English. And, in particular, from the English there was no question about the meaning of each of the variables. Net, math, and science with math, are written in complete sentences in a natural language. The variables are all clearly defined, discussed, explained, etc. At no time is an algebraic expression of such variables regarded as a substitute for the natural language. Take a physics book, throwout the English and leave just the equations, and will have nothing. Physics and math understand; so far computing does not. So computing tries to write force = mass*acceleration or some such and omit the English. For simple things, can get by this way. Otherwise, this approach is hopeless, at best presents the reader a puzzle problem of guessing. The matter of using mnemonic variable names as parts of speech in English is a grand mistake but common in writing in computer science. Bummer. Bluntly computing has not figured out that there is so far just one way to communicate meaning: Use complete sentences in a natural language. Period. That's all we've got. But computing has fooled itself into believing that algebraic expressions with mnemonic variable names form a 'new language' that, in computer source code, can provide the needed meaning without a natural language. Wrong. For F = m*a the situation is simple. But significant source code has much more complicated cases of 'meaning' to communicate. Again, computing tries to get by, say, using a big library of software classes, relying the mnemonic spelling of the classes and members and the documentation of the classes. In simple cases, can get by this way. But fundamentally, for some complicated code, the meaning, workings, etc. just must be explained, and there's only one way to do this: Complete sentences. So, writing these complete sentences to communicate meaning effectively is 'writing'. Done!