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Read the next paragraph after that damn silver bullet quote: > Skepticism is not pessimism, however. Although we see no startling breakthroughs, and indeed, be
by mrkeen 3y ago
Read the next paragraph after that damn silver bullet quote:
> Skepticism is not pessimism, however. Although we see no startling breakthroughs,
and indeed, believe such to be inconsistent with the nature of software, many
encouraging innovations are under way. A disciplined, consistent effort to develop,
propagate, and exploit them should indeed yield an order-of-magnitude improvement.
There is no royal road, but there is a road.
Stop using the quote as an excuse to dismiss tech. Exploit tech instead.
- jbandela1 3y agoAnd there have been order of magnitude improvements before. For example, Visual Basic was an order of magnitude improvement in creating Windows form based applications over programming then using the Windows API.
- c_crank 3y agoGradual improvements are the finest quality coffee for a programmer's mug. I would quite enjoy a future of writing clean, procedural programs with an improved C standard, VMs that are cleaner and easier to set up, and the latest edition of vanillajs
- bitwize 3y agoIf you want to write clean procedural programs with an improvement over C, you know where to find Free Pascal :)
- c_crank 3y agoI actually don't know where to find Free Pascal - the question of which kind of Pascal and which compiler / build environment to use always seemed leery for someone looking for a Better C type language.
- bitwize 3y agohttps://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.freepascal.org/ It's also likely in your favorite distro's repo. Among Pascal fans, Free Pascal is generally considered "the way" because it's closest to Turbo Pascal/Delphi.
- AstralStorm 3y agoIt is an Object Pascal (8 I believe?) implementation - has a backwards compatible unextended mode that matches Delphi. It does have a few extras of its own, especially improved assembly and C integrations. Lazarus is the open Delphi libraries implementation that uses it.
- erichocean 3y ago> I would quite enjoy a future of writing clean, procedural programs with an improved C standard That would look a lot like the Zig language, it's delightful to use. What Rust is to C++, Zig is to C.
- einpoklum 3y ago> What Rust is to C++, Zig is to C. No, they don't relate at all in the same way. (And that's not to mention the lack of consensus about what Rust is to C++...) That being said - Zig is quite the interesting language.
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoAt a 5000 ft level, I think it makes sense. C++ strives for zero-cost abstractions and lots of complexity with a side effect of making development more tractable for large teams with varying levels of familiarity with the codebase. Rust does the same thing, but uses different tools and levels. C has much lower language complexity but also requires longer onboarding times for engineers new to a project, at the cost of some sharp footguns that an experienced practitioner can avoid. Zig relative to Rust falls closer to this than a zero-cost abstraction based high-complexity language. Obviously the devil is in the details and Zig and C are very different languages, but I think the analogy stands well.
- jerf 3y agoWe already are. Everyone nowadays moves much faster than when Brooks was writing. Who remembers a world where wanting a hash table meant you coded a hash table, and looked like a wizard while doing it? Now our problem with hash tables is people using them too freely without understanding the consequences.
- namaria 3y agoThe point of the quote is that hard problems require hard solutions. The mentality of seeking easy solutions is the problem. It took decades to yield the improvements we've seen since Brooks was active (in the 60s!). And still here we are, with hundreds of SaaS offerings that promise to deliver the remedy to all your systemic and organizational ills, and turns out to be yet another snowflake in a growing pile. We dig ourselves deeper into complexity year after year because that's what people are incentivized to do. Yet the warning that we should take a systemic view and be patient has been with us for two generations now.
- kaba0 3y agoIt literally was the point of Brooks that the only significant productivity boost is using other people’s software.
- kaycebasques 3y agoThat's amazing, thanks for sharing. At large the technical writing community is dismissing generative AI. Of course I don't think it's a silver bullet but I have also been frustrated at this knee-jerk rejection. This quote really sums up my own thoughts and feelings beautifully.
- Avshalom 3y agoTo be sure, regular bullets can still pretty if you aren't actually fighting werewolves.