3 ms·

If you get excited by showing your friend some silly webpage, but aren't absolutely thrilled by function composition in haskell then you're a coder, not a progr

by TheDong 12y ago

If you get excited by showing your friend some silly webpage, but aren't absolutely thrilled by function composition in haskell then you're a coder, not a programmer. You're in the wrong class. The point of programming classes should not be to hide what programming is and show this silly mockery of it which javascript is. It shouldn't veil true programming issues, like correctly reasoning about the structure of your code, with a language which makes it easy to code in without ever programming. If you need to motivate someone to be a programmer, they should not be one at all. They should not be going on to write poorly implemented software because they didn't have a passion for implementing proper reference counting in a legacy C codebase, but instead wanted to write an iPhone app for their friends. If you need to motivate someone to be a programmer by teaching them to draw on a canvas or manipulate the dom, rather than teaching them the wonders of basic lambda calculus, then you're doing them a massive disservice by using the word "programming" to refer to something else entirely.

gcommer 12y ago
You are completely assuming that everyone who wants to program is intending to do so professionally, or that they won't be able to grow from a basic intro of "here is how to present your thoughts programmatically" and then cover the deeper subjects later, as they need to. This is especially relevant as we start teaching programming at younger and younger ages. I hope it's obvious that when kids start programming in 4th grade, it's much more intuitive to start them on Logo than lambda calculus... See, for example: https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ Also, if you look at the amount of money that "Flappy Bird" made, perhaps making brain-dead iPhone apps isn't such a bad deal...
hueving 12y ago
slow clap It's rants like these that really harm the perception of the functional programming community. It just portrays you as the archetypal 'misunderstood genius' trying to show everyone in the world how wrong they are and how only the 'true programmers' do what you think is right. Yet none of this is backed up by evidence that the benefits of functional programming lead to better software.
- cageface 12y ago
  Yet none of this is backed up by evidence that the benefits of functional programming lead to better software. Amen. I've been hearing exactly these kinds of grandiose claims from FP advocates going back as far as 1998. The funny thing is, the same people almost never seem to getting around to actually writing any code of any substance. As far as I'm concerned there are some good ideas coming from the FP community but the more extreme implementations of FP like Haskell have yet to prove their worth in production environments.
  - codygman 12y ago
    > FP like Haskell have yet to prove their worth in production environments Huh? What is your definition of proving worth in a production environment? Did you hear recently about bond? It's written in haskell by Microsoft and used in Xbox Live as well as other infrastructure. There's also facebooks Haxl... Remember Bump file/etc transfers in Samsung Galaxy commercials? That was written in haskell too.

by TheDong 12y ago

gcommer 12y ago

You are completely assuming that everyone who wants to program is intending to do so professionally, or that they won't be able to grow from a basic intro of "here is how to present your thoughts programmatically" and then cover the deeper subjects later, as they need to. This is especially relevant as we start teaching programming at younger and younger ages. I hope it's obvious that when kids start programming in 4th grade, it's much more intuitive to start them on Logo than lambda calculus... See, for example: https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ Also, if you look at the amount of money that "Flappy Bird" made, perhaps making brain-dead iPhone apps isn't such a bad deal...

hueving 12y ago

slow clap It's rants like these that really harm the perception of the functional programming community. It just portrays you as the archetypal 'misunderstood genius' trying to show everyone in the world how wrong they are and how only the 'true programmers' do what you think is right. Yet none of this is backed up by evidence that the benefits of functional programming lead to better software.

cageface 12y ago
Yet none of this is backed up by evidence that the benefits of functional programming lead to better software. Amen. I've been hearing exactly these kinds of grandiose claims from FP advocates going back as far as 1998. The funny thing is, the same people almost never seem to getting around to actually writing any code of any substance. As far as I'm concerned there are some good ideas coming from the FP community but the more extreme implementations of FP like Haskell have yet to prove their worth in production environments.
- codygman 12y ago
  > FP like Haskell have yet to prove their worth in production environments Huh? What is your definition of proving worth in a production environment? Did you hear recently about bond? It's written in haskell by Microsoft and used in Xbox Live as well as other infrastructure. There's also facebooks Haxl... Remember Bump file/etc transfers in Samsung Galaxy commercials? That was written in haskell too.