3 ms·

Programs are ideas that need to be understood, modeled, and manipulated by humans. Text is the best available way to incept ideas into the minds of humans.

glass_of_water 4y ago
If that were true, text books wouldn't contain any diagrams. So I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that there are cases when text is not the best way to incept ideas. So why should we be confined to just text when writing code? Should we not be free to choose the best tool for the job?
- dotopotoro 4y ago
  You should check out IDEs :) IDE takes plain old text as input, and lets the coder to interact with the model of the program. 1. Various graphical hints in text (highlighting keywords, selections, …) 2. Visualisation tools (draw database and class diagrams) 3. Navigation capabilities (go to implementation, definition etc) 4. Refactoring capabilities (“rename, “extract variable”, …) In my view, IDE is already “book with diagrams”. (“Diagrams” can still be improved, but concept is really there)
  - panstromek 4y ago
    True, but IDEs are currently severely limited by nature of textual sources (e.g. macros are notoriously tricky to deal with). It's much easier to start from a good model for IDE and derive textual reprentation and input method from that.
- samatman 4y ago
  If GPs statement were true, textbooks would be called text books instead of diagram books.
- preseinger 4y ago
  No, it is not the case that if the thing I said was true, then textbooks wouldn't contain diagrams.
david927 4y ago
> Text is the best available way I said exactly that. I added that it's horrific and it's not hard to imagine that we will find a better way.
- preseinger 4y ago
  I can't see how it's horrific. It's got an incredibly strong historical record.
  - david927 4y ago
    > strong historical record So did the medical practice of bleeding out a patient. It's been the only way but being the only book in the library doesn't qualify how good the book is. The problem with text is that it's not structured and therefore very difficult to manage. If you're going to create data for an accounting system, do you open up a Word document and start typing words like "Jimmy owes A/R five hundred?" Of course not because while you can search that, you can't query it. When was the last time you queried your code? Exactly. Horrific. And we can see it in our lives. When was the last time you jumped into someone else's code and could clearly see what was going on? Probably about the same time you last opened the middle of a novel and understood what was going on.
    - preseinger 4y ago
      > So did the medical practice of bleeding out a patient. It's been the only way but being the only book in the library doesn't qualify how good the book is. Bloodletting hasn't been performed for hundreds of years. We still use writing to convey ideas. > The problem with text is that it's not structured . . . Text is as structured as the author makes it.

glass_of_water 4y ago

If that were true, text books wouldn't contain any diagrams. So I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that there are cases when text is not the best way to incept ideas. So why should we be confined to just text when writing code? Should we not be free to choose the best tool for the job?

dotopotoro 4y ago
You should check out IDEs :) IDE takes plain old text as input, and lets the coder to interact with the model of the program. 1. Various graphical hints in text (highlighting keywords, selections, …) 2. Visualisation tools (draw database and class diagrams) 3. Navigation capabilities (go to implementation, definition etc) 4. Refactoring capabilities (“rename, “extract variable”, …) In my view, IDE is already “book with diagrams”. (“Diagrams” can still be improved, but concept is really there)
- panstromek 4y ago
  True, but IDEs are currently severely limited by nature of textual sources (e.g. macros are notoriously tricky to deal with). It's much easier to start from a good model for IDE and derive textual reprentation and input method from that.
samatman 4y ago
If GPs statement were true, textbooks would be called text books instead of diagram books.
preseinger 4y ago
No, it is not the case that if the thing I said was true, then textbooks wouldn't contain diagrams.

david927 4y ago

> Text is the best available way I said exactly that. I added that it's horrific and it's not hard to imagine that we will find a better way.

preseinger 4y ago
I can't see how it's horrific. It's got an incredibly strong historical record.
- david927 4y ago
  > strong historical record So did the medical practice of bleeding out a patient. It's been the only way but being the only book in the library doesn't qualify how good the book is. The problem with text is that it's not structured and therefore very difficult to manage. If you're going to create data for an accounting system, do you open up a Word document and start typing words like "Jimmy owes A/R five hundred?" Of course not because while you can search that, you can't query it. When was the last time you queried your code? Exactly. Horrific. And we can see it in our lives. When was the last time you jumped into someone else's code and could clearly see what was going on? Probably about the same time you last opened the middle of a novel and understood what was going on.
  - preseinger 4y ago
    > So did the medical practice of bleeding out a patient. It's been the only way but being the only book in the library doesn't qualify how good the book is. Bloodletting hasn't been performed for hundreds of years. We still use writing to convey ideas. > The problem with text is that it's not structured . . . Text is as structured as the author makes it.