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Except you now have a way “upwards” from an abstraction POV. Regular code is severely limited and highly surgical, by design. This is not. All these abstractio

Except you now have a way “upwards” from an abstraction POV. Regular code is severely limited and highly surgical, by design. This is not. All these abstraction layers were invented to serve old style manual coders. Why bother explaining in great detail about “Konva” layers and react anymore? Give it a few years and let it finetune on IT tech and I see this being reduced to “I want whiteboard app with X general characteristics” at which point I’d no longer speak about “programming”.

themodelplumber 4y ago
That "upwards" excludes a lot of relevant systems design logic that won't go away though, insofar as it is abstraction ad infinitum in the direction of fewer-relevant-details. What'll happen is, details will continue to be relevant as tastes adjust to the new normal. Like for my work, today, React is enterprise-ready, which is not good for me. It means it will likely dip my projects in unnecessary maintenance costs as compared to another widget of its type that does what I want in a lightweight manner. When I troubleshoot something of React's complexity, even my prompts will likely need to be longer. But also, that's just one component of one component. And you have to experience this stuff in the first place, to know that you should pay attention to these details and not those other ones, for a given job, for a given client, in a given industry, with given specs. So, if I was able to wave my hands I'd simply have all the problems I had back when I was a beginner. Ergo, it comes back to the clip art problem: Being able to buy clip art never made anyone a designer. But it made a lot of designers' jobs way easier. We are simply regressing toward the mean with regard to programming. It was never about computers in the first place, never so concerned with syntax. Anyway, back to browsing my theater program...
- SanderNL 4y ago
  Fair enough, but don’t we abstract “upwards” all the time? Assembly won’t go away, but do you deal with it?
  - themodelplumber 4y ago
    For one, assembly ceases to be a relevant detail and is replaced by other relevant details. So, I can't code fast games in a 1984 workplace, currently, being too out of touch with assembly on a given chipset. But I also can't wave my hands at an LLM and expect a modern, fast game of the desired quality to code itself. (Even though a clip art-style result is possible, the requirements are always going to be special details) The upwards direction example is also interesting because it's foundational to the cognitive functionality of one of the Jungian personality types. But other personality perspectives also apply to coding, which means in part that the directional, metaphorical-abstraction view can effectively be a blind spot if we map it as the preferred view on outcomes. The most common blind spot for this personality involves questions of relevant details, and their intersection with planning for yet-unknowns. There is a tendency to hand-wave which ends up being similar to prophetic behavior. Jung called this the "voice in the wilderness" noting that it can easily detach from sensibility (rationality) by departing from life details. Kind of interesting stuff. (Ni-dominant type)
    - SanderNL 4y ago
      Now you got me on the edge of my seat. What is this personality type?
      - themodelplumber 4y ago
        Ni-dominant. It exists nowadays in various post-Jungian models, many of which are really fascinating, having fleshed it out a lot. The opposing function to Ni is Se, which creates a dichotomy of planning/foreseeing vs. doing/performing. The functions oscillate as a kind of duty cycle, so a lot of sages out there have hobbies as musicians, stage magicians, etc. This dichotomy also effectively shuts out detail memory for context, dealing mostly with present vs. future. Even nostalgia is often ignored on the daily. So a Ni-dom will usually describe their memory as pattern-based, gestalt, more vague or general, etc.
        SanderNL 4y ago

themodelplumber 4y ago

That "upwards" excludes a lot of relevant systems design logic that won't go away though, insofar as it is abstraction ad infinitum in the direction of fewer-relevant-details. What'll happen is, details will continue to be relevant as tastes adjust to the new normal. Like for my work, today, React is enterprise-ready, which is not good for me. It means it will likely dip my projects in unnecessary maintenance costs as compared to another widget of its type that does what I want in a lightweight manner. When I troubleshoot something of React's complexity, even my prompts will likely need to be longer. But also, that's just one component of one component. And you have to experience this stuff in the first place, to know that you should pay attention to these details and not those other ones, for a given job, for a given client, in a given industry, with given specs. So, if I was able to wave my hands I'd simply have all the problems I had back when I was a beginner. Ergo, it comes back to the clip art problem: Being able to buy clip art never made anyone a designer. But it made a lot of designers' jobs way easier. We are simply regressing toward the mean with regard to programming. It was never about computers in the first place, never so concerned with syntax. Anyway, back to browsing my theater program...

SanderNL 4y ago
Fair enough, but don’t we abstract “upwards” all the time? Assembly won’t go away, but do you deal with it?
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  For one, assembly ceases to be a relevant detail and is replaced by other relevant details. So, I can't code fast games in a 1984 workplace, currently, being too out of touch with assembly on a given chipset. But I also can't wave my hands at an LLM and expect a modern, fast game of the desired quality to code itself. (Even though a clip art-style result is possible, the requirements are always going to be special details) The upwards direction example is also interesting because it's foundational to the cognitive functionality of one of the Jungian personality types. But other personality perspectives also apply to coding, which means in part that the directional, metaphorical-abstraction view can effectively be a blind spot if we map it as the preferred view on outcomes. The most common blind spot for this personality involves questions of relevant details, and their intersection with planning for yet-unknowns. There is a tendency to hand-wave which ends up being similar to prophetic behavior. Jung called this the "voice in the wilderness" noting that it can easily detach from sensibility (rationality) by departing from life details. Kind of interesting stuff. (Ni-dominant type)
  - SanderNL 4y ago
    Now you got me on the edge of my seat. What is this personality type?
    - themodelplumber 4y ago
      Ni-dominant. It exists nowadays in various post-Jungian models, many of which are really fascinating, having fleshed it out a lot. The opposing function to Ni is Se, which creates a dichotomy of planning/foreseeing vs. doing/performing. The functions oscillate as a kind of duty cycle, so a lot of sages out there have hobbies as musicians, stage magicians, etc. This dichotomy also effectively shuts out detail memory for context, dealing mostly with present vs. future. Even nostalgia is often ignored on the daily. So a Ni-dom will usually describe their memory as pattern-based, gestalt, more vague or general, etc.
      - SanderNL 4y ago