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If I were king of the forest, there would be a degree program in Comparative Coding (comparative lit for code). We don’t treat this as a creative discipline an

If I were king of the forest, there would be a degree program in Comparative Coding (comparative lit for code). We don’t treat this as a creative discipline and thus we don’t spend time looking at masters, how they were successful and the ways they were just as human as anyone. Someone would get paid for writing stuff like this, same as people getting paid to write about Poe, Cummings, Hemingway, Thoreau. But I guess the problem is that the way we price teaching and coding, the gap is far too wide between talking about and doing, unless you do it as a side hustle/hobby.

atan2 2y ago
Some people do teach this type of content and do a pretty good job at it. DisplacedGamers on youtube is a great channel, Gustavo Pezzi from pikuma.com is excellent, and there is also Ben Eater also covering 6502 programming, just to name a few.
- akoboldfrying 2y ago
  Having greatly enjoyed Ben Eater's content (especially the build-your-own-VGA!), I'll definitely check those others out. Thanks!
nradov 2y ago
Should people get paid to write about Poe, Cummings, Hemingway, Thoreau? The original works themselves are pretty accessible. People can just read them and form their own interpretations. I'm skeptical that I really gained anything from reading literary criticism, at least it didn't make me appreciate the original works more or make me a better writer. I understand that there's a long tradition of scholarship in comparative literature and I'm not trying to be anti-intellectual or dismissive of an entire field of study, but maybe we should examine our assumptions and consider whether we're getting a good value from paying academics to do that work? Is it possible that society would be better off if we paid them to do something else, like maybe write new literature?
- hinkley 2y ago
  My English Lit friend definitely was aware of a trap of learning to pick apart literature before you can create your own. And then fell into it anyway. I suppose it’s like medical students and the DSM, sometimes it just freaks you out instead of informing. It should probably be an MS class or a senior level class.
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  I don't actually care one way or another about that particular subject, but if you start making judgements about academic fields of study are worthwhile to pay for on the basis of value to society, you allow other people -- more ignorant people, let's say -- with different concepts of societal value to make somewhat unfortunate decisions. You might end up without any new literature at all.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Very little literature is written by academics. People who want to write new literature can just go ahead and do it. In a world of limited time and resources we always make judgements about which academic fields of study are worthwhile. At some level it's a zero-sum game: time spent on comparative literature is time not spent on philosophy or history or creative writing. So, given that we have to prioritize which people to pay and which courses to require, how should we make those decisions?
    - FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
      All knowledge is worthwhile. Its that easy. If you want to distinguish “useful” knowledge everything will eventually get thrown out. Why should people spend time and money investigating distant galaxies for example? Its completely useless for 99.999999 of all people. At best it results in “huh, neat” when reading about some new discovery about some star.
    - stevenAthompson 2y ago
      > At some level it's a zero-sum game To live a life thinking this way outside of work would fill me with existential despair. Life well lived is more than a mere exercise in market efficiency. Academia isn't supposed to maximize our return on investment, and the people who made this their lives work didn't choose the field because it was the highest pay they could obtain or the thing which contributed the most to the orphan crushing machine (the economy).
wkat4242 2y ago
I was talking to a friend who works in development and he says that they even frown on recursion now. They think it's too complex and causes junior programmers to footgun. It's a shame because recursive code is often the most clean, elegant and fast for things like traversing trees.
- hinkley 2y ago
  One of my peeves with JavaScript is that I feel the reduce() function has its arguments in the wrong order and increases cognitive load. Elixir’s is “right”. I’ve never been that much of a fan of recursion myself. Iteration and list comprehension for me.
- fifilura 2y ago
  I don't really write code that traverse trees that often these days. I do use libraries or services (e.g. SQL databases) that do though. And I have no idea whether the implementation of map/reduce I use is implemented as a recursive function or not, I just use it. If your friend works with implementing libraries or database engines I would be a bit shocked. If he implements applications and services I could agree that keeping things simple and not inventing your own frameworks could be a good idea.
pjc50 2y ago
The MIT "platform studies" series is quite close to that, http://platformstudies.com/ http://platformstudies.com/
therealcamino 2y ago
There's a famous annotated version of Unix V6 that falls into this category. I heard that it had copyright issues for years, though. It'd be interesting to see people write more of these about open source code. https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf

atan2 2y ago

Some people do teach this type of content and do a pretty good job at it. DisplacedGamers on youtube is a great channel, Gustavo Pezzi from pikuma.com is excellent, and there is also Ben Eater also covering 6502 programming, just to name a few.

akoboldfrying 2y ago
Having greatly enjoyed Ben Eater's content (especially the build-your-own-VGA!), I'll definitely check those others out. Thanks!

nradov 2y ago

Should people get paid to write about Poe, Cummings, Hemingway, Thoreau? The original works themselves are pretty accessible. People can just read them and form their own interpretations. I'm skeptical that I really gained anything from reading literary criticism, at least it didn't make me appreciate the original works more or make me a better writer. I understand that there's a long tradition of scholarship in comparative literature and I'm not trying to be anti-intellectual or dismissive of an entire field of study, but maybe we should examine our assumptions and consider whether we're getting a good value from paying academics to do that work? Is it possible that society would be better off if we paid them to do something else, like maybe write new literature?

hinkley 2y ago
My English Lit friend definitely was aware of a trap of learning to pick apart literature before you can create your own. And then fell into it anyway. I suppose it’s like medical students and the DSM, sometimes it just freaks you out instead of informing. It should probably be an MS class or a senior level class.
KerrAvon 2y ago
I don't actually care one way or another about that particular subject, but if you start making judgements about academic fields of study are worthwhile to pay for on the basis of value to society, you allow other people -- more ignorant people, let's say -- with different concepts of societal value to make somewhat unfortunate decisions. You might end up without any new literature at all.
- nradov 2y ago
  Very little literature is written by academics. People who want to write new literature can just go ahead and do it. In a world of limited time and resources we always make judgements about which academic fields of study are worthwhile. At some level it's a zero-sum game: time spent on comparative literature is time not spent on philosophy or history or creative writing. So, given that we have to prioritize which people to pay and which courses to require, how should we make those decisions?
  - FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
    All knowledge is worthwhile. Its that easy. If you want to distinguish “useful” knowledge everything will eventually get thrown out. Why should people spend time and money investigating distant galaxies for example? Its completely useless for 99.999999 of all people. At best it results in “huh, neat” when reading about some new discovery about some star.
  - stevenAthompson 2y ago
    > At some level it's a zero-sum game To live a life thinking this way outside of work would fill me with existential despair. Life well lived is more than a mere exercise in market efficiency. Academia isn't supposed to maximize our return on investment, and the people who made this their lives work didn't choose the field because it was the highest pay they could obtain or the thing which contributed the most to the orphan crushing machine (the economy).

wkat4242 2y ago

I was talking to a friend who works in development and he says that they even frown on recursion now. They think it's too complex and causes junior programmers to footgun. It's a shame because recursive code is often the most clean, elegant and fast for things like traversing trees.

hinkley 2y ago
One of my peeves with JavaScript is that I feel the reduce() function has its arguments in the wrong order and increases cognitive load. Elixir’s is “right”. I’ve never been that much of a fan of recursion myself. Iteration and list comprehension for me.
fifilura 2y ago
I don't really write code that traverse trees that often these days. I do use libraries or services (e.g. SQL databases) that do though. And I have no idea whether the implementation of map/reduce I use is implemented as a recursive function or not, I just use it. If your friend works with implementing libraries or database engines I would be a bit shocked. If he implements applications and services I could agree that keeping things simple and not inventing your own frameworks could be a good idea.

pjc50 2y ago

The MIT "platform studies" series is quite close to that, http://platformstudies.com/ http://platformstudies.com/

therealcamino 2y ago

There's a famous annotated version of Unix V6 that falls into this category. I heard that it had copyright issues for years, though. It'd be interesting to see people write more of these about open source code. https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf