3 ms·

Little Languages Are the Future of Programming (2022)

4 points by mpweiher 3y ago

082349872349872 3y ago
In my current ideal future, there's a bifurcation: - People who don't like to code use LLMs, and spend all their time reviewing and checking in thousands of lines of meh (but that's OK, because when requirements change, instead of changing that meh you can always ask the LLM for new meh) - People who do like to code move past the algol school, and instead of implementing modules in hundreds of lines of code, start using terser languages in which they can discuss implementations as follows: A: the current implementation is '.....' but I'm thinking to replace it with ',,,,' B: how about '..$,$..'? A: cool, or we can replace that with '..;$$..', which reduces to '..;..'! I'll try that now.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  > move past the algol school That sounds like an excellent idea if we can manage it. https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-papers/5/Can-Programmers-Escape-the-Gentle-Tyranny-of-call-return- https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-p...
DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
> Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves. > —Alan Kay, from A Conversation with Alan Kay Mr Kay got every detail of his simile wrong: "The Egyptian pyramids" have a very diverse internal structure, but assuming he's having "the" pyramids in mind, the three big ones on the Giza plateau, those are definitely not built from bricks, but from limestone blocks that weigh one to several tonnes apiece, and much of their inside volume can be assumed to be made from 'rubble' (of a rather coarse variety, basically the leftover material from cutting the slabs out of the quarries) with a little mortar. Their structural integrity is such that four and a half millennia of visitors, weather, earthquakes, tomb robbers and stone-pilfering have not managed to bring them anywhere close to collapse. Brute force you will need for such a project, but closer inspection reveals an incredible amount of planning, preparation and logistics, from precise measurements, millimeter-accurate dressing of uncounted limestone blocks, timely delivery from quarries—some of them hundreds of kilometers up the Nile river—and so on and so forth. Also, it is not known whether slaves were forced to take part in the construction of the pyramids; evidence seems to point to this being an effort more akin to the United State's Apollo program where hundreds of thousands of people worked together to achieve a singular (and some will say: equally vain, symbolic) goal.

4 points by mpweiher 3y ago

In my current ideal future, there's a bifurcation: - People who don't like to code use LLMs, and spend all their time reviewing and checking in thousands of lines of meh (but that's OK, because when requirements change, instead of changing that meh you can always ask the LLM for new meh) - People who do like to code move past the algol school, and instead of implementing modules in hundreds of lines of code, start using terser languages in which they can discuss implementations as follows: A: the current implementation is '.....' but I'm thinking to replace it with ',,,,' B: how about '..$,$..'? A: cool, or we can replace that with '..;$$..', which reduces to '..;..'! I'll try that now.

mpweiher 3y ago
> move past the algol school That sounds like an excellent idea if we can manage it. https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-papers/5/Can-Programmers-Escape-the-Gentle-Tyranny-of-call-return- https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-p...

DemocracyFTW2 3y ago

> Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves. > —Alan Kay, from A Conversation with Alan Kay Mr Kay got every detail of his simile wrong: "The Egyptian pyramids" have a very diverse internal structure, but assuming he's having "the" pyramids in mind, the three big ones on the Giza plateau, those are definitely not built from bricks, but from limestone blocks that weigh one to several tonnes apiece, and much of their inside volume can be assumed to be made from 'rubble' (of a rather coarse variety, basically the leftover material from cutting the slabs out of the quarries) with a little mortar. Their structural integrity is such that four and a half millennia of visitors, weather, earthquakes, tomb robbers and stone-pilfering have not managed to bring them anywhere close to collapse. Brute force you will need for such a project, but closer inspection reveals an incredible amount of planning, preparation and logistics, from precise measurements, millimeter-accurate dressing of uncounted limestone blocks, timely delivery from quarries—some of them hundreds of kilometers up the Nile river—and so on and so forth. Also, it is not known whether slaves were forced to take part in the construction of the pyramids; evidence seems to point to this being an effort more akin to the United State's Apollo program where hundreds of thousands of people worked together to achieve a singular (and some will say: equally vain, symbolic) goal.