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Yup, it's kind of tedious seeing these types of article / blog post. As anyone that works as a programmer knows, it's not the grammar of programming that is ha

Yup, it's kind of tedious seeing these types of article / blog post. As anyone that works as a programmer knows, it's not the grammar of programming that is hard. It's understanding the hardware and what it can do that is hard. It's encoding nebulous and sometimes conflicting business requirements into something a computer can understand that is hard. It's taking into account all of the different error states that a process can get into that is hard. Learning the syntax of a programming language? Not hard. We as programmers have weird brains, compared to most of the population. You give a programmer the list of road rules, and they will probably immediately identify, instinctively, several rules that are mutually exclusive / in conflict with each other. You're able to understand how a home entertainment system needs to be set up, even though that's really not what most programmers do. You identify loopholes in legal frameworks / contracts, because the lawyers that wrote them aren't used to thinking about what has to happen for edge cases.

alexnorth 13y ago
I agree with all the things you say are hard: understanding computation, encoding complex requirements, handling edge cases; but typing code into an editor and then re-running your application doesn't provide much support for making them easier. Better tools could help programmers and non-programmers alike work with that complexity much more effectively.
- barce 13y ago
  Tools are designed for certain requirements. As the commenter, antimagic, noted, these requirements can conflict. A better tool would definitely have to sort out those conflicts, but at this point we're talking about something like AI. To talk down the scope of lots of projects, I've always educated a client by saying if certain types of thinking were automated then we'd have to say we were creating AI and that the cost of the project would grow exponentially.
- freshhawk 13y ago
  They could, but those two sets of tools would be completely different and would be built based on completely different principles.
tbrownaw 13y ago
You identify loopholes in legal frameworks / contracts, because the lawyers that wrote them aren't used to thinking about what has to happen for edge cases. The lawyers do understand, and did it on purpose. Programmers just think similarly enough to lawyers that they can sometimes find things that were meant to be hidden from the general public (and from the junior lawyers who work for the competition). :)
joshdance 13y ago
I don't find these articles tedious. I think it awesome that people want to solve more problems with computers. The more people that can solve problems, the more people that will solve problems, the more problems that get solved. People want to use the power of computers to solve problems, and that is hard to do. Until it is easy (never) these articles will continue.

alexnorth 13y ago

I agree with all the things you say are hard: understanding computation, encoding complex requirements, handling edge cases; but typing code into an editor and then re-running your application doesn't provide much support for making them easier. Better tools could help programmers and non-programmers alike work with that complexity much more effectively.

barce 13y ago
Tools are designed for certain requirements. As the commenter, antimagic, noted, these requirements can conflict. A better tool would definitely have to sort out those conflicts, but at this point we're talking about something like AI. To talk down the scope of lots of projects, I've always educated a client by saying if certain types of thinking were automated then we'd have to say we were creating AI and that the cost of the project would grow exponentially.
freshhawk 13y ago
They could, but those two sets of tools would be completely different and would be built based on completely different principles.

tbrownaw 13y ago

You identify loopholes in legal frameworks / contracts, because the lawyers that wrote them aren't used to thinking about what has to happen for edge cases. The lawyers do understand, and did it on purpose. Programmers just think similarly enough to lawyers that they can sometimes find things that were meant to be hidden from the general public (and from the junior lawyers who work for the competition). :)

joshdance 13y ago

I don't find these articles tedious. I think it awesome that people want to solve more problems with computers. The more people that can solve problems, the more people that will solve problems, the more problems that get solved. People want to use the power of computers to solve problems, and that is hard to do. Until it is easy (never) these articles will continue.