5 ms·
> "Programming is a notion to extend human capability, by offloading humanly-infeasible work onto a machine. It is the promise of an amplified knowledge worker.
by john_b 13y ago
> "Programming is a notion to extend human capability, by offloading humanly-infeasible work onto a machine. It is the promise of an amplified knowledge worker. This would be worthy to learn."
With this (correct) notion the author continues until he decides that
> "Meanwhile there are few souls looking to evolve text code into something more humanly intuitive. For example something you can touch, you don’t have to read, or that tells you what the computer is thinking, so you don’t have to think like a computer yourself."
I can't help but feel that what the author really wants is some futuristic kind of AI assistant. Decades of programming progress has resulted in numerous abstractions piled on top of one another in order to minimize the amount of "thinking like a computer" that you have to do. But all abstractions are leaky and when you encounter those leaks you will inevitably have to be able to think like the machine you are trying to communicate with.
Why is it acceptable to say that effective communication with people depends on being able to think like the person you're talking to, but demand that communication with a far more different and limited machine should never require you to compromise on your preferred thought patterns? This is the fundamental fallacy of the natural language programming advocates. They want to use another entity to do things for them but demand all communication with that entity be in their preferred language, on their own terms.
- ForHackernews 13y ago> Why is it acceptable to say that effective communication with people depends on being able to think like the person you're talking to, but demand that communication with a far more different and limited machine should never require you to compromise on your preferred thought patterns? Other people are sentient beings with their own personalities, dreams, desires, and attitudes. Recognition of our shared humanity necessitates some level of compromise, respect, and accommodation when dealing with other individuals. In contrast, computers are unfeeling machines. We made them, and within the limits of physics, math, and our own creative powers, we can make them do whatever we wish. Why shouldn't we strive to make them as accommodating as possible? Why shouldn't I try to create a machine that intuitively corrects my mechanical errors to represent the shape of my ideas?
- TheZenPsycho 13y agoThere's nothing wrong with trying. There is, however something wrong (or at least irritating) with demanding that it magically become like that, without trying, or contributing any insight into how to achieve it.
- dllthomas 13y agoMoreover, I'd just jump in here to point out that effective communication with people quite frequently involves "text code".
- rix0r 13y agoIs the entire premise of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) not that you can influence people's thought patterns by using language as code, as instructions?
- dllthomas 13y agoThat's basically my impression, but my understanding is that NLP is not very strongly supported so I'd be leery about using theories from there as if they provided much evidence about the world. I don't think you need to get so vague though - if you want to communicate a task to a human, you very explicitly use language most of the time (particularly for anything complex). They may not follow your instructions for whatever reason, but the act of communication is done with text.