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It makes perfect sense. Most programmers learn to program on a C-like, Basic-like or Python-like language. Not ML-like. What's familiar is what's easiest to ado

by dom96 4y ago

It makes perfect sense. Most programmers learn to program on a C-like, Basic-like or Python-like language. Not ML-like. What's familiar is what's easiest to adopt.

bmitc 4y ago
But those languages weren't familiar to begin with. It's like people are saying programmers can only learn to program one time.
- acheron 4y ago
  Given how much effort has been spent in shoving Javascript into places it doesn't belong solely so that programmers don't have to learn something else, that seems to be more true than not.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  No, but that's what most people learned, so most people will continue to favor more C-like languages than languages that are not C-like. If you want people to favor ML-like languages, you'd have to start off teaching them ML first (which some colleges do). Industry-wise as well, C-like langs have network effects through the past 30 years, especially in JS land which is a lot of the professional software engineering work done these days.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    This is incorrect. People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. It's easy to prove this fact with some natural example outside of programming. Let's say I have several tasks I need you to do. If I wanted to present those tasks to you in written form, what would those tasks look like? They would look like a series of procedures. Any human would present imperative instructions to you WITHOUT being taught anything beforehand. Nobody is going to put those tasks into a single run on sentence because that's less intuitive to us. Additionally if I want you to repeat a task I'm not going to write something self referential. I just say repeat this task four times or something. We communicate this way through language and through writing, so OF COURSE c like syntax is more natural. (for those who didn't pick up on it, I'm referring to function composition and recursion respectively in the examples I just gave.) You got it backwards. The industry teaches C-like syntax because that syntax is naturally more intuitive. This is despite the fact that in the long run FP-syntax is overall better.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Sure, I'll agree with that. Imperative code is simply more natural for people.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      > People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. Are there some studies that back that up? My wife took the How to Code course on edX, and the use of Racket was a non-issue. The use of it was quite literally transparent. The issue is that humans react to something foreign with huge amounts of bias. So if I person has any introduction at all to some form of a C-type of language, it seems to shut down all forms of curiosity, generally speaking. I honestly wonder if that has been studied. I was first taught C, Python, and Java, and was totally uninterested in programming. Once I found functional-first and visual dataflow languages, I was hooked. I'm generally curious what C and Python people think when they learn something like Prolog? Do they exclaim "this isn't hard enough?".
      - kilgnad 4y ago
        >Are there some studies that back that up? My wife took the How to Code course on edX, and the use of Racket was a non-issue. The use of it was quite literally transparent. There's no studies. It's like asking for a study about how people tend to smile when they're happy. Do you really need a study for something so obvious? Do you go around the world thinking nothing is true or real unless someone spent money on some sort of quantitative analysis? If you read the rest of my post you'll see that what I stated follows from logic. When we have a series of tasks we want written down, we automatically write it down via a list of imperative procedures. This is done automatically. We haven't taken any TODO list writing lessons or anything before hand we just do it procedurally meaning we're born to do it this way. It's innate. This is the obvious default. And thus as a result any programming language similar to that default will be more intuitive. As for your wife, who's to say procedural programming is not easier? She may have found racket easy but that doesn't mean she wouldn't find imperative languages far more intuitive.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. I disagree with this, as most people do not use any of these languages. Excel is by far the most popular programming language, and it's a mostly-functional, reactive, lisp-style language. That's very far from C, and the closest we have to end-user programming. So if anything, the evidence says that people have an innate biological bias toward Excel-style programming; whereas we, the small fraction of a fraction of people who can program in C, are the weird ones.
- wpietri 4y ago
  They can only learn to program the first time one time. After that, everything is relative to their first language. So learning cost becomes a function of the distance between old languages and the new one. Moreover, the gain in going from zero programming languages to one is huge. You can make things! Going from one to two is small in comparison. You can make things, but hopefully somewhat better. So the ROI on learning a very different language isn't great for most. And that's when the technology adoption curve comes in handy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle For any technology, some people will like the novelty and will be risk tolerant, so they'll pick it up for fun. Others will be seeking some strong benefit; if the technology provides that they'll adopt it too. If that happens, another chunk of people will pick it up as the coming thing. But circa half of people adopt the new thing only when it becomes dominant or when they're forced to by circumstance. Max Planck said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” And that's often shortened as "science proceeds one funeral at a time." Software's not quite that bad, but it's certainly heading in that direction.
- anon291 4y ago
  If you change the order of language introduction, people's preferred languages and paradigms change, based on my experience TA'ing in undergrad. Our program started off with python, but immediately introduced lisp and prolog right after. The output was CS grads who were more varied in their language choices.

by dom96 4y ago

It makes perfect sense. Most programmers learn to program on a C-like, Basic-like or Python-like language. Not ML-like. What's familiar is what's easiest to adopt.

bmitc 4y ago

But those languages weren't familiar to begin with. It's like people are saying programmers can only learn to program one time.

acheron 4y ago
Given how much effort has been spent in shoving Javascript into places it doesn't belong solely so that programmers don't have to learn something else, that seems to be more true than not.
satvikpendem 4y ago
No, but that's what most people learned, so most people will continue to favor more C-like languages than languages that are not C-like. If you want people to favor ML-like languages, you'd have to start off teaching them ML first (which some colleges do). Industry-wise as well, C-like langs have network effects through the past 30 years, especially in JS land which is a lot of the professional software engineering work done these days.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  This is incorrect. People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. It's easy to prove this fact with some natural example outside of programming. Let's say I have several tasks I need you to do. If I wanted to present those tasks to you in written form, what would those tasks look like? They would look like a series of procedures. Any human would present imperative instructions to you WITHOUT being taught anything beforehand. Nobody is going to put those tasks into a single run on sentence because that's less intuitive to us. Additionally if I want you to repeat a task I'm not going to write something self referential. I just say repeat this task four times or something. We communicate this way through language and through writing, so OF COURSE c like syntax is more natural. (for those who didn't pick up on it, I'm referring to function composition and recursion respectively in the examples I just gave.) You got it backwards. The industry teaches C-like syntax because that syntax is naturally more intuitive. This is despite the fact that in the long run FP-syntax is overall better.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Sure, I'll agree with that. Imperative code is simply more natural for people.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    > People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. Are there some studies that back that up? My wife took the How to Code course on edX, and the use of Racket was a non-issue. The use of it was quite literally transparent. The issue is that humans react to something foreign with huge amounts of bias. So if I person has any introduction at all to some form of a C-type of language, it seems to shut down all forms of curiosity, generally speaking. I honestly wonder if that has been studied. I was first taught C, Python, and Java, and was totally uninterested in programming. Once I found functional-first and visual dataflow languages, I was hooked. I'm generally curious what C and Python people think when they learn something like Prolog? Do they exclaim "this isn't hard enough?".
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      >Are there some studies that back that up? My wife took the How to Code course on edX, and the use of Racket was a non-issue. The use of it was quite literally transparent. There's no studies. It's like asking for a study about how people tend to smile when they're happy. Do you really need a study for something so obvious? Do you go around the world thinking nothing is true or real unless someone spent money on some sort of quantitative analysis? If you read the rest of my post you'll see that what I stated follows from logic. When we have a series of tasks we want written down, we automatically write it down via a list of imperative procedures. This is done automatically. We haven't taken any TODO list writing lessons or anything before hand we just do it procedurally meaning we're born to do it this way. It's innate. This is the obvious default. And thus as a result any programming language similar to that default will be more intuitive. As for your wife, who's to say procedural programming is not easier? She may have found racket easy but that doesn't mean she wouldn't find imperative languages far more intuitive.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > People are born with an innate biological bias towards C like syntax OVER ML syntax or even FP syntax. I disagree with this, as most people do not use any of these languages. Excel is by far the most popular programming language, and it's a mostly-functional, reactive, lisp-style language. That's very far from C, and the closest we have to end-user programming. So if anything, the evidence says that people have an innate biological bias toward Excel-style programming; whereas we, the small fraction of a fraction of people who can program in C, are the weird ones.
wpietri 4y ago
They can only learn to program the first time one time. After that, everything is relative to their first language. So learning cost becomes a function of the distance between old languages and the new one. Moreover, the gain in going from zero programming languages to one is huge. You can make things! Going from one to two is small in comparison. You can make things, but hopefully somewhat better. So the ROI on learning a very different language isn't great for most. And that's when the technology adoption curve comes in handy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle For any technology, some people will like the novelty and will be risk tolerant, so they'll pick it up for fun. Others will be seeking some strong benefit; if the technology provides that they'll adopt it too. If that happens, another chunk of people will pick it up as the coming thing. But circa half of people adopt the new thing only when it becomes dominant or when they're forced to by circumstance. Max Planck said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” And that's often shortened as "science proceeds one funeral at a time." Software's not quite that bad, but it's certainly heading in that direction.
anon291 4y ago
If you change the order of language introduction, people's preferred languages and paradigms change, based on my experience TA'ing in undergrad. Our program started off with python, but immediately introduced lisp and prolog right after. The output was CS grads who were more varied in their language choices.