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To me, the idea that the essence of a program is the model of reality it embodies suggests principles for the use of comments, literate programming tools, and o
by tumba 13y ago
To me, the idea that the essence of a program is the model of reality it embodies suggests principles for the use of comments, literate programming tools, and other methods of documentation. A prime goal of documentation ought to be to avoid premature or unnecessary "program death."
Or perhaps, to enable program resurrection. Naur explicitly contends that theory is not something that can be expressed. I disagree. Communication from one mind to another is never perfect, but humanity has thousands of years of experience communicating mental models about the world.
- charlieflowers 13y agoThere is definitely something to this. Literate programming, or something like it, really does come close to hitting the nail on the head. It should be more prominent. Why isn't it? Well, I think that certain humans are better than others at inferring and "globbing onto" the abstract theories held in other people's heads. Those who are good at it become great software developers. And we take pride in our ability to do this "grokking" without any hand-holding or "crutches." From that viewpoint, literate programming and other things that would address the problem look like "crutches" for "sissies." And maybe it is more efficient to find the people who can "grok" than it is to try to articulate the theory and keep that articulation up-to-date.