4 ms·

I've always had a kind of feeling that there is an upper bound on the rate at which a human can articulate an (original) idea/program/function in explicit enoug

I've always had a kind of feeling that there is an upper bound on the rate at which a human can articulate an (original) idea/program/function in explicit enough terms for a computer to then run it. Even to do this in the first place will always require a bare minimum understanding of the language of logic; basic control flow statements, variables and so on. This is why I feel things like Bret Victor's idea of the 'MathKiller' (which as I understand the idea, is his general term for a hypothetical universally-intuitive computing environment which can model anything) are goals which we can only ever approach asymptotically - there will always be some uncharted waters where the only option available to those who want to explore further is simply to straight up write some code. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I feel improving the sophistication of the programming languages we use or changing the core paradigms upon which they are based will not help the situation; improving the sophistication of the tools we use to write them with will.

VLM 14y ago
The author's argument is a classic literature criticism / philosophy argument and I'm kicking myself trying to remember which specific person/theory from philosophy / lit crit he is more or less paraphrasing. Note that I'm not by any means accusing the original author of plagiarism or of trying to pull off a stunt. Convergent evolution makes perfect sense. Although comp sci languages are a bit more rigid than other human languages, trying to express creative / complicated stuff in a human created language is an old, heavily discussed problem, even if the original author doesn't know it. Does this go all the way back to Plato? I can't remember its just too early in the morning. The bright side is "we" as a species have been churning out new lit more or less continuously for a couple millenia, so even if lit production dies off at some point in the future (and I don't think it will) that means that in computer languages we "only" have a couple more millenia of productive programming left.

VLM 14y ago

The author's argument is a classic literature criticism / philosophy argument and I'm kicking myself trying to remember which specific person/theory from philosophy / lit crit he is more or less paraphrasing. Note that I'm not by any means accusing the original author of plagiarism or of trying to pull off a stunt. Convergent evolution makes perfect sense. Although comp sci languages are a bit more rigid than other human languages, trying to express creative / complicated stuff in a human created language is an old, heavily discussed problem, even if the original author doesn't know it. Does this go all the way back to Plato? I can't remember its just too early in the morning. The bright side is "we" as a species have been churning out new lit more or less continuously for a couple millenia, so even if lit production dies off at some point in the future (and I don't think it will) that means that in computer languages we "only" have a couple more millenia of productive programming left.