11 ms·

What is code? (2015)

132 points by bblcla 9mo ago

dang 9mo ago
Related. Others? What Is Code? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33331697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33331697 - Oct 2022 (50 comments) What is code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17259483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17259483 - June 2018 (36 comments) What Is Code? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 - June 2015 (356 comments)
- kuharich 9mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699945
  - dang 9mo ago
    Thanks! That one had only one comment (a good one though - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9700322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9700322) so I merged it into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870. (and yes, updated the comment count above)
kylehotchkiss 9mo ago
A Paul Ford masterpiece. I loved this so much when it came out, I split the article into a bunch of tweets and had a bot repost them every hour. rip, https://twitter.com/whatiscode https://twitter.com/whatiscode
jurgenaut23 9mo ago
Wow. The guy can write, that’s for sure! And what a refreshment from f*king AI slop that you find everywhere these days.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  You can say fucking here, one, we're all adults, two, there's no algorithms on HN penalising you (and if they were they'd penalise you anyway because it's not 1995 anymore), and three, it's almost insulting to believe replacing a letter with a star will make a word unrecognisable. That said, this is why I like HN or any other kind of curated website, the voting systems and comments and the like will (hopefully) make sure low-effort writing will be filtered out.
  - immibis 9mo ago
    There are algorithms at play across HN. There are more types of algorithms than ones that penalize comments with swear words in them. Some HN algorithms are run by HN servers, some are run by HN moderators, and some are run by third parties.
iqp 9mo ago
Beautifully written, a joy to read but, sadly, it feels like something from a bygone era. Nobody chants "Developers! Developers! Developers!" anymore now that everything is dominated by AI, and the joy of coding is gone too. People like Steve Yegge, who I used to aspire to be like back in 2006, when I started my career as a developer, now writes about how he uses 10+ concurrent LLM agents to code, review, and ship & doesn't even bother to even look at the code being produced anymore. Just today, I implemented 2 features using Cursor & GPT-5.1 Codex-Max & I didn't have to write a single line of code myself. But it felt wrong. It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?".
- nemosaltat 9mo ago
  Same, I got so much fomo from reading the gas town post I think you’re alluding too. Someone else can link it but it’s not “worth the read” in the way this was communicates so many ideas and captures/distills the zeitgeist of that time. I guess the gas town one does capture our moment, but embracing YOLO spaghetti-o with reckless abandon, is a) depressing, even though I also feel like a middling programmer and b) actually seems to be dazzling these newer beleaguered bureaucrats precisely because they think they could just talk to the LLM instead of TMitTB. Anyway, if that post and its ilk leave a bad taste, this was mouthwash for me. Lucky 10,000 I know, but I had never seen this (or felt so seen, as they say). I had to go check that he wasn’t wrong about PHP being Personal Home Page. I somehow never picked up that the recursive naming thing is a backcroynm.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  > It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?". It feels different if you replace "LLM" with "outsourcing". Thing is, instructing a team of software engineers what you want is a lot more work (they need a lot more handholding), a lot more expensive, and a lot slower. But I'd argue that the work is the same - writing specifications, adjusting accordingly. Minus the human factor. LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job, but it will affect outsourcing and agencies as an industry. Of course, outsourcing companies will / are using it too.
olowe 9mo ago
I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not in “tech”. They must work somehow… why did my iPhone (sold that) feel similar to my PC (sold that too) but only one is called a computer? This article framed things in a way that shook me out of a physically dangerous, homeless, jobless rut. It was all code. And I could learn it if I had the time. Perhaps it was the way it was written; I couldn’t believe intrigue and passion of computing could be weaved together like this. But there it was. I did make it home eventually. Fortunately the first 2000km lift back from western Australia to the eastern states with a crystal meth addict on the run from the police didn’t end violently. A few weeks back in Sydney with family some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now. I guess I should print this article out to show to my kids!
- adityaathalye 9mo ago
  This story is "best comments" material. It would be even if it were a fabulist tale. Thanks for sharing!
  - olowe 9mo ago
    Haha thanks for saying that. It’s real! It’s relatively easy to get into the middle of nowhere in Australia after all ;) Actually still haven’t published my journal scribblings on my blog 10 years on..
- bossyTeacher 9mo ago
  >some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now There is a gap between receptionist and official software engineer. Please, give us more details about your journey and what happened in between
comradesmith 9mo ago
Code is rusty ankles and ashy kneecaps.
stingraycharles 9mo ago
Reminds me of this discussion between Alan Kay and Rich Hickey on this site 9 years ago. Rich Hickey always asserted that code is data (which aligns with the LISP view of the world), Alan Kay thinks that’s a bad idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941656
- dominicrose 9mo ago
  Clojure is pretty similar to EDN which stands for extensible data notation. cf. https://clojure.org/reference/reader https://clojure.org/reference/reader
weregiraffe 9mo ago
Baby, don't hurt me
- andrewshadura 9mo ago
  Don't hurt me, no more.
effnorwood 9mo ago
atomic sequences that make other atomic sequences change energy states. now pass the butter.
throw0101d 9mo ago
One answer to the question, from Bryan Cantrill: > The thing that is remarkable about it is that it has this property of being information—that we made it up—but it is also machine, and it has these engineered properties. And this is where software is unlikely anything we have ever done, and we're still grappling on that that means. What does it mean to have information that functions as machine? It's got this duality: you can see it as both. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPa5-BWd4w&t=4m37s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPa5-BWd4w&t=4m37s > We suffer -- tremendously -- from a bias from traditional engineering that writing code is like digging a ditch: that it is a mundane activity best left to day labor -- and certainly beneath the Gentleman Engineer. This belief is profoundly wrong because software is not like a dam or a superhighway or a power plant: in software, the blueprints _are_ the thing; the abstraction _is_ the machine. * https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-beautiful-code/ https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-bea...
- stevenhuang 9mo ago
  There's a similar article I read on this in regards to intelligence and LLMs that says simulated intelligence _is_ intelligence.
  - hnfong 9mo ago
    Interesting. Do you have the link? I'm kinda interested in the subject (see eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247266 )
    - stevenhuang 9mo ago
      I couldn't find it, I'm starting to think it might have been a hn comment thread. At the time I read this article but I don't completely agree with some of the points. For one it's too certain for some things and also seems AI generated, but it was somewhat interesting Yes I do remember reading and agreeing much with your comments on this topic! https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-comprehensive-debunking-of-arguments-against-llm-agi-132c2fbfe33a https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-c...
kayo_20211030 9mo ago
Based on the comments. What is truth? (2026), or even sense?
svilen_dobrev 9mo ago
this is the best description of software (as notion and as profession) for non-insiders. Here another jewel from Paul Ford: "The only technology that you need is deadlines" And an article about it: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/
vivzkestrel 9mo ago
- What is code? - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more - No, I don't know why you're not there I pushed to Main, - but you don't care Is it the bracket? Or is it the path? Math.random() wrath! Give me a sign! - I want no other, no other framework This is our Sprint, our time When we’re together, I need you forever Is it... Clean Code? - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me no more - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more What is code? - I'll see myself out

What *is* code? (2015)

132 points by bblcla 9mo ago

dang 9mo ago

Related. Others? What Is Code? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33331697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33331697 - Oct 2022 (50 comments) What is code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17259483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17259483 - June 2018 (36 comments) What Is Code? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 - June 2015 (356 comments)

kuharich 9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699945
- dang 9mo ago
  Thanks! That one had only one comment (a good one though - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9700322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9700322) so I merged it into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9698870. (and yes, updated the comment count above)

kylehotchkiss 9mo ago

A Paul Ford masterpiece. I loved this so much when it came out, I split the article into a bunch of tweets and had a bot repost them every hour. rip, https://twitter.com/whatiscode https://twitter.com/whatiscode

jurgenaut23 9mo ago

Wow. The guy can write, that’s for sure! And what a refreshment from f*king AI slop that you find everywhere these days.

Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
You can say fucking here, one, we're all adults, two, there's no algorithms on HN penalising you (and if they were they'd penalise you anyway because it's not 1995 anymore), and three, it's almost insulting to believe replacing a letter with a star will make a word unrecognisable. That said, this is why I like HN or any other kind of curated website, the voting systems and comments and the like will (hopefully) make sure low-effort writing will be filtered out.
- immibis 9mo ago
  There are algorithms at play across HN. There are more types of algorithms than ones that penalize comments with swear words in them. Some HN algorithms are run by HN servers, some are run by HN moderators, and some are run by third parties.

iqp 9mo ago

Beautifully written, a joy to read but, sadly, it feels like something from a bygone era. Nobody chants "Developers! Developers! Developers!" anymore now that everything is dominated by AI, and the joy of coding is gone too. People like Steve Yegge, who I used to aspire to be like back in 2006, when I started my career as a developer, now writes about how he uses 10+ concurrent LLM agents to code, review, and ship & doesn't even bother to even look at the code being produced anymore. Just today, I implemented 2 features using Cursor & GPT-5.1 Codex-Max & I didn't have to write a single line of code myself. But it felt wrong. It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?".

nemosaltat 9mo ago
Same, I got so much fomo from reading the gas town post I think you’re alluding too. Someone else can link it but it’s not “worth the read” in the way this was communicates so many ideas and captures/distills the zeitgeist of that time. I guess the gas town one does capture our moment, but embracing YOLO spaghetti-o with reckless abandon, is a) depressing, even though I also feel like a middling programmer and b) actually seems to be dazzling these newer beleaguered bureaucrats precisely because they think they could just talk to the LLM instead of TMitTB. Anyway, if that post and its ilk leave a bad taste, this was mouthwash for me. Lucky 10,000 I know, but I had never seen this (or felt so seen, as they say). I had to go check that he wasn’t wrong about PHP being Personal Home Page. I somehow never picked up that the recursive naming thing is a backcroynm.
Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
> It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?". It feels different if you replace "LLM" with "outsourcing". Thing is, instructing a team of software engineers what you want is a lot more work (they need a lot more handholding), a lot more expensive, and a lot slower. But I'd argue that the work is the same - writing specifications, adjusting accordingly. Minus the human factor. LLM coding agents won't kill software development as a job, but it will affect outsourcing and agencies as an industry. Of course, outsourcing companies will / are using it too.

olowe 9mo ago

I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not in “tech”. They must work somehow… why did my iPhone (sold that) feel similar to my PC (sold that too) but only one is called a computer? This article framed things in a way that shook me out of a physically dangerous, homeless, jobless rut. It was all code. And I could learn it if I had the time. Perhaps it was the way it was written; I couldn’t believe intrigue and passion of computing could be weaved together like this. But there it was. I did make it home eventually. Fortunately the first 2000km lift back from western Australia to the eastern states with a crystal meth addict on the run from the police didn’t end violently. A few weeks back in Sydney with family some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now. I guess I should print this article out to show to my kids!

adityaathalye 9mo ago
This story is "best comments" material. It would be even if it were a fabulist tale. Thanks for sharing!
- olowe 9mo ago
  Haha thanks for saying that. It’s real! It’s relatively easy to get into the middle of nowhere in Australia after all ;) Actually still haven’t published my journal scribblings on my blog 10 years on..
bossyTeacher 9mo ago
>some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now There is a gap between receptionist and official software engineer. Please, give us more details about your journey and what happened in between

comradesmith 9mo ago

Code is rusty ankles and ashy kneecaps.

stingraycharles 9mo ago

Reminds me of this discussion between Alan Kay and Rich Hickey on this site 9 years ago. Rich Hickey always asserted that code is data (which aligns with the LISP view of the world), Alan Kay thinks that’s a bad idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941656

dominicrose 9mo ago
Clojure is pretty similar to EDN which stands for extensible data notation. cf. https://clojure.org/reference/reader https://clojure.org/reference/reader

weregiraffe 9mo ago

Baby, don't hurt me

andrewshadura 9mo ago
Don't hurt me, no more.

effnorwood 9mo ago

atomic sequences that make other atomic sequences change energy states. now pass the butter.

throw0101d 9mo ago

One answer to the question, from Bryan Cantrill: > The thing that is remarkable about it is that it has this property of being information—that we made it up—but it is also machine, and it has these engineered properties. And this is where software is unlikely anything we have ever done, and we're still grappling on that that means. What does it mean to have information that functions as machine? It's got this duality: you can see it as both. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPa5-BWd4w&t=4m37s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPa5-BWd4w&t=4m37s > We suffer -- tremendously -- from a bias from traditional engineering that writing code is like digging a ditch: that it is a mundane activity best left to day labor -- and certainly beneath the Gentleman Engineer. This belief is profoundly wrong because software is not like a dam or a superhighway or a power plant: in software, the blueprints _are_ the thing; the abstraction _is_ the machine. * https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-beautiful-code/ https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-bea...

stevenhuang 9mo ago
There's a similar article I read on this in regards to intelligence and LLMs that says simulated intelligence _is_ intelligence.
- hnfong 9mo ago
  Interesting. Do you have the link? I'm kinda interested in the subject (see eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247266 )
  - stevenhuang 9mo ago
    I couldn't find it, I'm starting to think it might have been a hn comment thread. At the time I read this article but I don't completely agree with some of the points. For one it's too certain for some things and also seems AI generated, but it was somewhat interesting Yes I do remember reading and agreeing much with your comments on this topic! https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-comprehensive-debunking-of-arguments-against-llm-agi-132c2fbfe33a https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-c...

kayo_20211030 9mo ago

Based on the comments. What is truth? (2026), or even sense?

svilen_dobrev 9mo ago

this is the best description of software (as notion and as profession) for non-insiders. Here another jewel from Paul Ford: "The only technology that you need is deadlines" And an article about it: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/

vivzkestrel 9mo ago

- What is code? - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more - No, I don't know why you're not there I pushed to Main, - but you don't care Is it the bracket? Or is it the path? Math.random() wrath! Give me a sign! - I want no other, no other framework This is our Sprint, our time When we’re together, I need you forever Is it... Clean Code? - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me no more - Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more What is code? - I'll see myself out