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Brilliant analysis! Navel gazing indeed. Typical NCA (Non-Coding Architect) stuff. This reminds me of the UML and the Model-Driven Architecture movement of the

Brilliant analysis! Navel gazing indeed. Typical NCA (Non-Coding Architect) stuff. This reminds me of the UML and the Model-Driven Architecture movement of the days before, where architect astronauts imagined a happy little world where you could just get away from that dirty coding, join some boxes with lines in all sorts of charts and then have that generate your code. And it will produce code you actually want to ship and that does what you want to do. This disdain for writing code is not new. This classic essay about "code as design" from 1992 (!) is still relevant today: http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_originalletter.html http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_original...

InclinedPlane 13y ago
In the presenter's worldview it seems as though a lot of subtle details are ignored or just not seen, whereas in reality seemingly subtle details can sometimes be hugely important. Consider Ruby vs Python, for example. From a 10,000 foot view they almost look like the same language, but at a practical level they are very different. And a lot of that comes down to the details. There are dozens of new languages within the last few decades or so that share almost all of the same grab bag of features in a broad sense but where the rubber meets the road end up being very different languages with very different strengths. Consider, for example, C# vs Go vs Rust vs Coffeescript vs Lua. They are all hugely different languages but they are also very closely related languages. I suspect that the killer programming medium of 2050 isn't going to be some transformatively different methodology for programming that is unrecognizable to us, it's going to be something with a lot of similarities to things I've listed above but with a different set of design choices and tradeoffs, with a more well put together underlying structure and tooling, and likely with a few new ways of doing old things thrown in and placed closer to the core than we're used to today (my guess would be error handling, testing, compiling, package management, and revision control). There is just so much potential in plain jane text based programming that I find it odd that someone would so easily clump it into a single category and write it all off at the same time. It's a medium that can embrace everything from Java on the one hand to Haskell or lisp on the other, we haven't come anywhere close to reaching the limits of expressiveness available in text-based programming.
- bonaldi 13y ago
  You can cast this entire comment in terms of hex/assembler vs C/Fortran and you get the same logical form. We haven't come anywhere close to reaching the limits of expressiveness in assembler either, yet we've mostly given up on it for better things. Try arguing the devil's argument position. What can you come up with that's might be better than text-based programming? Nothing? We're really in the best of all possible worlds?
jrheard 13y ago
I don't think it's fair to call him a Non-Coding Architect. Have you seen his other talks, or the articles he's published via his website http://worrydream.com http://worrydream.com ? Bret clearly codes.
- meemoo 13y ago
  But does he ship?
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Sometimes not shipping gives us more freedom to explore.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - malandrew 13y ago
    I really wish he did. I think one of the greatest disservices he does himself is not shipping working code for the examples in his presentation. We've seen what and we're intrigued, but ship something that shows how so we can take the idea and run with it.
    - nickmain 13y ago
      I think the whole point of his series of talks is to inspire others to invent new things that not even he has thought of.
      - malandrew 13y ago
        A delay in releasing code would be valuable then. Those too impatient to wait can start hacking on something new now and give lots of thought to this frontier and those that want to explore casually can do so a few months later when the source is released. Releasing nothing is a non-solution. Why make everyone else stumble where you have? That's just inconsiderate. Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Typical NCA (Non-Coding Architect) stuff. I assure you that devices of this sort require a great deal of code: http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/Ion_front-c20cdb1d4927b9558ac8b98e147823a3.jpg http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/Ion_front-c20cdb...
zapov 13y ago
Can you expand on what's wrong with declarative design? I'm not talking about UML, but modeling specifically. Since I've been doing it for quite a few years I guess I know a thing or two about MDA/MDE. And it's not about disdain for writing code.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

In the presenter's worldview it seems as though a lot of subtle details are ignored or just not seen, whereas in reality seemingly subtle details can sometimes be hugely important. Consider Ruby vs Python, for example. From a 10,000 foot view they almost look like the same language, but at a practical level they are very different. And a lot of that comes down to the details. There are dozens of new languages within the last few decades or so that share almost all of the same grab bag of features in a broad sense but where the rubber meets the road end up being very different languages with very different strengths. Consider, for example, C# vs Go vs Rust vs Coffeescript vs Lua. They are all hugely different languages but they are also very closely related languages. I suspect that the killer programming medium of 2050 isn't going to be some transformatively different methodology for programming that is unrecognizable to us, it's going to be something with a lot of similarities to things I've listed above but with a different set of design choices and tradeoffs, with a more well put together underlying structure and tooling, and likely with a few new ways of doing old things thrown in and placed closer to the core than we're used to today (my guess would be error handling, testing, compiling, package management, and revision control). There is just so much potential in plain jane text based programming that I find it odd that someone would so easily clump it into a single category and write it all off at the same time. It's a medium that can embrace everything from Java on the one hand to Haskell or lisp on the other, we haven't come anywhere close to reaching the limits of expressiveness available in text-based programming.

bonaldi 13y ago
You can cast this entire comment in terms of hex/assembler vs C/Fortran and you get the same logical form. We haven't come anywhere close to reaching the limits of expressiveness in assembler either, yet we've mostly given up on it for better things. Try arguing the devil's argument position. What can you come up with that's might be better than text-based programming? Nothing? We're really in the best of all possible worlds?

jrheard 13y ago

I don't think it's fair to call him a Non-Coding Architect. Have you seen his other talks, or the articles he's published via his website http://worrydream.com http://worrydream.com ? Bret clearly codes.

meemoo 13y ago
But does he ship?
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Sometimes not shipping gives us more freedom to explore.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- malandrew 13y ago
  I really wish he did. I think one of the greatest disservices he does himself is not shipping working code for the examples in his presentation. We've seen what and we're intrigued, but ship something that shows how so we can take the idea and run with it.
  - nickmain 13y ago
    I think the whole point of his series of talks is to inspire others to invent new things that not even he has thought of.
    - malandrew 13y ago
      A delay in releasing code would be valuable then. Those too impatient to wait can start hacking on something new now and give lots of thought to this frontier and those that want to explore casually can do so a few months later when the source is released. Releasing nothing is a non-solution. Why make everyone else stumble where you have? That's just inconsiderate. Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Typical NCA (Non-Coding Architect) stuff. I assure you that devices of this sort require a great deal of code: http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/Ion_front-c20cdb1d4927b9558ac8b98e147823a3.jpg http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/Ion_front-c20cdb...

zapov 13y ago

Can you expand on what's wrong with declarative design? I'm not talking about UML, but modeling specifically. Since I've been doing it for quite a few years I guess I know a thing or two about MDA/MDE. And it's not about disdain for writing code.