3 ms·

In the future, programming will not be done through coding but through composition. I'm a bit biased on this prediction.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
That's the difference between a musician and a DJ
- duaneb 13y ago
  > That's the difference between a musician and a DJ Are you insinuating a DJ is not a musician?
alatkins 13y ago
Kind of like how OO was going to give us massive libraries of OTS software components with which we could just 'wire-up' programs?
- zanny 13y ago
  You generally can, though. All the web servers, all the frameworks, all the packages. If I wanted to make a graphing calaculator in Python I wouldn't write a reverse polish calculator or do more complex string parsing on user input, I'd use numpy and sympy, with a qt gui, probably written in qml. I see very few domain problems where the boatload majority of the work hasn't been done for you, and you just glue legos together. Network stack? Most languages have an httplib or you could get libftp or some such from a foss repository. The only real problem is figuring out which api is easier to use, since there usually are competing choices on a lot of these drop in solutions. qt or boost? django or bottle? backbone or angular?
  - alatkins 13y ago
    Yes I agree, but software reuse isn't exactly new. The commenter was obviously referring to functional programming techniques, and I was trying to point out that other silver bullets have been spruiked in the past, only to fall short. And besides, someone still has to program these libraries - it isn't turtles all the way down.
bergie 13y ago
Working on that: http://noflojs.org/ http://noflojs.org/
Goosey 13y ago
It already is though, isn't it? As zanny points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081020) we already make heavy use of libraries and software packages (I don't see much difference between an embedded webserver library and hosting in a standalone webserver). Even discounting components such as the OS I'll blindly assert that nearly every significant program created today has a runtime path that is 95% 3rd party components, if you were somehow able to measure the LOC passed through. Of course LOC != 'contributed value'. Much as people don't assemble in thousands to see a jukebox progress through a playlist but do for the experience created by a skilled DJ, the last 5% is the most significant 5% in programming (and perhaps, all creative endeavors)
Peaker 13y ago
What's the difference?

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

That's the difference between a musician and a DJ

duaneb 13y ago
> That's the difference between a musician and a DJ Are you insinuating a DJ is not a musician?

alatkins 13y ago

Kind of like how OO was going to give us massive libraries of OTS software components with which we could just 'wire-up' programs?

zanny 13y ago
You generally can, though. All the web servers, all the frameworks, all the packages. If I wanted to make a graphing calaculator in Python I wouldn't write a reverse polish calculator or do more complex string parsing on user input, I'd use numpy and sympy, with a qt gui, probably written in qml. I see very few domain problems where the boatload majority of the work hasn't been done for you, and you just glue legos together. Network stack? Most languages have an httplib or you could get libftp or some such from a foss repository. The only real problem is figuring out which api is easier to use, since there usually are competing choices on a lot of these drop in solutions. qt or boost? django or bottle? backbone or angular?
- alatkins 13y ago
  Yes I agree, but software reuse isn't exactly new. The commenter was obviously referring to functional programming techniques, and I was trying to point out that other silver bullets have been spruiked in the past, only to fall short. And besides, someone still has to program these libraries - it isn't turtles all the way down.

bergie 13y ago

Working on that: http://noflojs.org/ http://noflojs.org/

Goosey 13y ago

It already is though, isn't it? As zanny points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081020) we already make heavy use of libraries and software packages (I don't see much difference between an embedded webserver library and hosting in a standalone webserver). Even discounting components such as the OS I'll blindly assert that nearly every significant program created today has a runtime path that is 95% 3rd party components, if you were somehow able to measure the LOC passed through. Of course LOC != 'contributed value'. Much as people don't assemble in thousands to see a jukebox progress through a playlist but do for the experience created by a skilled DJ, the last 5% is the most significant 5% in programming (and perhaps, all creative endeavors)

Peaker 13y ago

What's the difference?