4 ms·

> 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

> 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.

kilgnad 4y ago
Wrong. Excel is biased towards familiarity with mathematics. It just builds on our pre-existing familiarity with mathematical formulas. The intended usage is ALSO just for matehmatical formula calculations. Excel is not typically used to execute step by step procedures across IO. To analyze our innate biological biases you must remove all context of mathematics and programming and just frame it from the context of a typical activity: What do you get when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks? you get a list of imperative instructions. This happens without ANY additional learning or education. For excel you need to be taught excel and there's a per-requisite of already being familiar with basic mathematical language. I mean honestly this is all obvious to me. I can come at it from another angle to help you see why it's so obvious. What type of universe are humans designed to live in? We live in a universe that moves forward in time, with each change in incremental step forward in time comes changes in the properties of things around us. State changes and mutations. Our brains are tuned to live in this type of state changing universe ALONG with being state changing entities that are an intrinsic part of the universe itself. Logically a programming style that imitates how the universe, and how our minds work will be MUCH more intuitive. What sort of universe is functional programming? It's a place where time doesn't exist, state changes don't occur. This universe is actually impossible to exist. Think about it. You know about von neumann machines right? Can you build a lambda calculus machine where no imperative instruction ever occurs? No it's impossible. In order to even simulate this universe we need access to the time domain to execute an evaluation step. Theoretically if you build some sort of adder that can add 50 values at the same time you can have a 50 operation FP program evaled in one step. Practically speaking the evaluation must happen in several steps because adders only add a couple values at a time then save it to memory. We only know time doesn't exist in the FP world is because these equations can be evaluated in different orders. That's why haskell can do lazy evaluation. Basically functional programming is a sort of clever fantasy universe we made up. We aren't biologically tuned to operate or even analyze such a universe. We have to take extra steps in imagination to make sense of it. It is NOT intuitive.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > What do you get when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks? you get a list of imperative instructions. I think this is where we differ, and why everything is clear to you and not to me. You're taking this as axiomatic, but I think there's more to it than that. Of course you get back an imperative list of instructions when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks. It's almost tautological. What you're missing is not all programming is writing a list of instructions, because indeed not all programming is imperative. I'm sure you know this, but you've been conflating programming paradigms and syntaxes, so I want to make sure we're clear with the terminology. I can agree that the imperative paradigm is indeed very natural for many people to understand, but I don't think that means people are biologically predisposition to C-style syntax. We can look at how young children learn how to program in order to get a feel for this. Seymour Papert famously studied this with his language Logo, which is a lisp-like language. Its turtle graphics module allows kids to give imperative instructions to a computer which cause it to draw shapes on the screen. But it's a far cry from c-style syntax, so I think the link between a paradigm being "natural" and a predisposition for any particular syntax is tenuous. Indeed many new programmers reach for Python over C, which while imperative, eschews much of the syntax that really gives C its style. Moreover, it seems like neither the syntax nor the paradigm is what causes young learners to really grok Logo. In his book "Mindstorms", Papert demonstrates how he can use his system to get young students in elementary school to simulate systems of differential equations. Alan Kay does something similar in his Etoys environment, which itself isn't imperative. As an educator, I've never seen anyone get young students reliably do the same with C. > This happens without ANY additional learning or education. It does happen after some brain development. Much easier than coming up with a list of steps to execute is just to ask something else to give you the result you want, and allow it to fill in the details a.k.a. declarative programming. Children will do this far before they gain the ability to formulate a correct step-by-step program. To test this, ask a child what they want for lunch? They will not give you a list of steps to complete to make the lunch: - go to the kitchen. - put bread on plate - put cheese on bread - put turkey on cheese - put bread on top - return to me with plate No. They will say "I want a sandwich with cheese and turkey", and then will expect a sandwich to be delivered that meets the specifications. This is the declarative paradigm, so if we're using the developmental timeline of children to determine to which programming paradigm they have a biological predisposition, it would then have to be declarative, not imperative. > What type of universe are humans designed to live in? We live in a universe that moves forward in time, with each change in incremental step forward in time comes changes in the properties of things around us. If our world were a programming language, it would be continuous, distributed, parallel, and asynchronous. It's like that movie: everything is happening everywhere all at once, which is pretty much the exact opposite of imperative "one thing at a time, then move to the next thing" programming. The reactive paradigm exhibited in Excel actually is closer to this reality than the imperative paradigm. Note I'm not really arguing for the functional paradigm, I'm arguing for Excel as the most natural for people. I still think that's the case after our exchange, especially considering the points you raised. > That's why haskell can do lazy evaluation. Haskell can do lazy evaluation because it was explicitly designed by scholars to specifically study lazy evaluation. You can have a functional strictly evaluated language. It's not key to the paradigm. > Basically functional programming is a sort of clever fantasy universe we made up. We aren't biologically tuned to operate or even analyze such a universe. Given what I wrote above about being continuous, distributed, and asynchronous, it would seem that imperative programming on discrete logic is also a clever fantasy universe.

kilgnad 4y ago

Wrong. Excel is biased towards familiarity with mathematics. It just builds on our pre-existing familiarity with mathematical formulas. The intended usage is ALSO just for matehmatical formula calculations. Excel is not typically used to execute step by step procedures across IO. To analyze our innate biological biases you must remove all context of mathematics and programming and just frame it from the context of a typical activity: What do you get when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks? you get a list of imperative instructions. This happens without ANY additional learning or education. For excel you need to be taught excel and there's a per-requisite of already being familiar with basic mathematical language. I mean honestly this is all obvious to me. I can come at it from another angle to help you see why it's so obvious. What type of universe are humans designed to live in? We live in a universe that moves forward in time, with each change in incremental step forward in time comes changes in the properties of things around us. State changes and mutations. Our brains are tuned to live in this type of state changing universe ALONG with being state changing entities that are an intrinsic part of the universe itself. Logically a programming style that imitates how the universe, and how our minds work will be MUCH more intuitive. What sort of universe is functional programming? It's a place where time doesn't exist, state changes don't occur. This universe is actually impossible to exist. Think about it. You know about von neumann machines right? Can you build a lambda calculus machine where no imperative instruction ever occurs? No it's impossible. In order to even simulate this universe we need access to the time domain to execute an evaluation step. Theoretically if you build some sort of adder that can add 50 values at the same time you can have a 50 operation FP program evaled in one step. Practically speaking the evaluation must happen in several steps because adders only add a couple values at a time then save it to memory. We only know time doesn't exist in the FP world is because these equations can be evaluated in different orders. That's why haskell can do lazy evaluation. Basically functional programming is a sort of clever fantasy universe we made up. We aren't biologically tuned to operate or even analyze such a universe. We have to take extra steps in imagination to make sense of it. It is NOT intuitive.

ModernMech 4y ago
> What do you get when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks? you get a list of imperative instructions. I think this is where we differ, and why everything is clear to you and not to me. You're taking this as axiomatic, but I think there's more to it than that. Of course you get back an imperative list of instructions when you ask someone to write down a series of tasks. It's almost tautological. What you're missing is not all programming is writing a list of instructions, because indeed not all programming is imperative. I'm sure you know this, but you've been conflating programming paradigms and syntaxes, so I want to make sure we're clear with the terminology. I can agree that the imperative paradigm is indeed very natural for many people to understand, but I don't think that means people are biologically predisposition to C-style syntax. We can look at how young children learn how to program in order to get a feel for this. Seymour Papert famously studied this with his language Logo, which is a lisp-like language. Its turtle graphics module allows kids to give imperative instructions to a computer which cause it to draw shapes on the screen. But it's a far cry from c-style syntax, so I think the link between a paradigm being "natural" and a predisposition for any particular syntax is tenuous. Indeed many new programmers reach for Python over C, which while imperative, eschews much of the syntax that really gives C its style. Moreover, it seems like neither the syntax nor the paradigm is what causes young learners to really grok Logo. In his book "Mindstorms", Papert demonstrates how he can use his system to get young students in elementary school to simulate systems of differential equations. Alan Kay does something similar in his Etoys environment, which itself isn't imperative. As an educator, I've never seen anyone get young students reliably do the same with C. > This happens without ANY additional learning or education. It does happen after some brain development. Much easier than coming up with a list of steps to execute is just to ask something else to give you the result you want, and allow it to fill in the details a.k.a. declarative programming. Children will do this far before they gain the ability to formulate a correct step-by-step program. To test this, ask a child what they want for lunch? They will not give you a list of steps to complete to make the lunch: - go to the kitchen. - put bread on plate - put cheese on bread - put turkey on cheese - put bread on top - return to me with plate No. They will say "I want a sandwich with cheese and turkey", and then will expect a sandwich to be delivered that meets the specifications. This is the declarative paradigm, so if we're using the developmental timeline of children to determine to which programming paradigm they have a biological predisposition, it would then have to be declarative, not imperative. > What type of universe are humans designed to live in? We live in a universe that moves forward in time, with each change in incremental step forward in time comes changes in the properties of things around us. If our world were a programming language, it would be continuous, distributed, parallel, and asynchronous. It's like that movie: everything is happening everywhere all at once, which is pretty much the exact opposite of imperative "one thing at a time, then move to the next thing" programming. The reactive paradigm exhibited in Excel actually is closer to this reality than the imperative paradigm. Note I'm not really arguing for the functional paradigm, I'm arguing for Excel as the most natural for people. I still think that's the case after our exchange, especially considering the points you raised. > That's why haskell can do lazy evaluation. Haskell can do lazy evaluation because it was explicitly designed by scholars to specifically study lazy evaluation. You can have a functional strictly evaluated language. It's not key to the paradigm. > Basically functional programming is a sort of clever fantasy universe we made up. We aren't biologically tuned to operate or even analyze such a universe. Given what I wrote above about being continuous, distributed, and asynchronous, it would seem that imperative programming on discrete logic is also a clever fantasy universe.