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>We need tools that bring the learning curve down and allow people to develop their own basic tools to make their lives easier This won't achieve much because

>We need tools that bring the learning curve down and allow people to develop their own basic tools to make their lives easier This won't achieve much because the issue is that most people can't think about the problems they face in a structured way. Modern programming isn't hard, all you need to learn is a handful of control structures and how to do I/O, and there are a multitude of tools to take away the tedious bits. But if you can't describe the problem you are trying to solve in a structured way than no non-AI tool will help. P.S. I remember being considered a Wizard in a non-technical university course because I looked up some Excel tutorials and built a spreadsheet with some basic calculations and graphing. This wasn't technically hard, but most of my classmates lacked the ability to comprehend the relationships between different cells and tables in Excel.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago
Modern programming isn't hard you say, for a programmer I'd like to add. I have never been able to program well with something like a programming language as I can seem to hold enough information in my head structured that way. Building giant spreadsheets is easy though. I don't think programming is for everyone, but more people could learn than today.
- Perdition 12y ago
  Sounds like you need to modularise the problem more, which you are naturally forced to do by the limitations of spreadsheet "programming".
ericHosick 12y ago
Currently, programming requires critical thinking and coding. Enabling people to become critical thinkers is a much bigger problem than just programming: programming will always require critical thinking. Making programming a computer easier is a difficult problem to solve but very solvable as long as we assume that programmers are critical thinkers.
- Perdition 12y ago
  See I don't think coding can get any easier for the level of problem we are talking about here. The kind of small problems we seem to be talking about are the kind of thing that is within the realm of "scripting". You don't need a deep understanding of Computer Science or advanced data structures to write good enough code for those problems. "Coding" will never go away before AI because at some point you need to formally express the design you have thought up. It doesn't really matter if you do that with arcane syntax, symbols, or "natural" language.
  - ericHosick 12y ago
    > "Coding" will never go away before AI because at some point you need to formally express the design you have thought up. It doesn't really matter if you do that with arcane syntax, symbols, or "natural" language. It sounds like you are saying, and I'm not disagreeing with you, that the act of speaking required coding. That is, speaking is taking input from the senses and memory, converting that input into a natural language (coding/encoding) through thought and saying the final thought out loud. How does this help in understanding the differences between typing out syntax, manipulating symbols, expression using natural language or AI using it's own coding approaches?
    - Perdition 12y ago
      No, I am saying that coding will always require some kind of formal expression, and that the difficulty of the grammar used is not the major barrier (as these issues can be dealt with by compilers and IDEs). Attempts to create "natural" language programming haven't worked because actual natural languages are too informal and imprecise for simple algorithmic comprehension. A system that can comprehend natural language and turn imprecise specifications into a program should be an AI.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago

Modern programming isn't hard you say, for a programmer I'd like to add. I have never been able to program well with something like a programming language as I can seem to hold enough information in my head structured that way. Building giant spreadsheets is easy though. I don't think programming is for everyone, but more people could learn than today.

Perdition 12y ago
Sounds like you need to modularise the problem more, which you are naturally forced to do by the limitations of spreadsheet "programming".

ericHosick 12y ago

Currently, programming requires critical thinking and coding. Enabling people to become critical thinkers is a much bigger problem than just programming: programming will always require critical thinking. Making programming a computer easier is a difficult problem to solve but very solvable as long as we assume that programmers are critical thinkers.

Perdition 12y ago
See I don't think coding can get any easier for the level of problem we are talking about here. The kind of small problems we seem to be talking about are the kind of thing that is within the realm of "scripting". You don't need a deep understanding of Computer Science or advanced data structures to write good enough code for those problems. "Coding" will never go away before AI because at some point you need to formally express the design you have thought up. It doesn't really matter if you do that with arcane syntax, symbols, or "natural" language.
- ericHosick 12y ago
  > "Coding" will never go away before AI because at some point you need to formally express the design you have thought up. It doesn't really matter if you do that with arcane syntax, symbols, or "natural" language. It sounds like you are saying, and I'm not disagreeing with you, that the act of speaking required coding. That is, speaking is taking input from the senses and memory, converting that input into a natural language (coding/encoding) through thought and saying the final thought out loud. How does this help in understanding the differences between typing out syntax, manipulating symbols, expression using natural language or AI using it's own coding approaches?
  - Perdition 12y ago
    No, I am saying that coding will always require some kind of formal expression, and that the difficulty of the grammar used is not the major barrier (as these issues can be dealt with by compilers and IDEs). Attempts to create "natural" language programming haven't worked because actual natural languages are too informal and imprecise for simple algorithmic comprehension. A system that can comprehend natural language and turn imprecise specifications into a program should be an AI.