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Two camps I see are (1) those who want to hold the program in their head and be able to answer ever more obscure questions about the program using their underst
by Buttons840 3y ago
Two camps I see are (1) those who want to hold the program in their head and be able to answer ever more obscure questions about the program using their understanding. And (2) those who try things until it works and then address problems as needed.
Do these two camps align with your two camps? Those who want control fight the cascade, others just fiddle with it until it looks good?
I don't mean to disparage either camp, because we need both approaches in the real world.
- zarzavat 3y agoI don’t think these are two separate camps. Rather everyone has a value - let’s call it S - which is the maximum size and complexity of a program they can hold in their head. When the program’s size is smaller than S then they use strategy 1, when it’s larger they use strategy 2. When you are a beginner your S is close to zero, as you gain experience you develop increasingly better compression to be able to grow your effective S, but it’s never infinite. There’s always some size program where you will devolve to strategy 2, and all programs tend to grow in complexity until they reach the point where nobody understands them, like some kind of complexity Peter principle.