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> The real lesson of programming is to be able to to create models that stand up agains the cold asphalt of reality. I would argue that's just a matter of mode
by ibdknox 12y ago
> The real lesson of programming is to be able to to create models that stand up agains the cold asphalt of reality.
I would argue that's just a matter of modeling enough to be good at it. I indirectly talk about this in a few places, while discussing how we iteratively craft models and in the section about kids (where I bring up debugging specifically). It's very important to work out assumptions and to be able to explore your models to find out where you've gone wrong. Programming is one way of doing that in terms of the computer, my hope is we'll find better ways of doing it in the future.
- michaelfeathers 12y ago> It's very important to work out assumptions and to be able to explore your models to find out where you've gone wrong. I agree and that's what I was getting at. To me, it's 'programming' when create something that has to be consistent enough for us to be able to explore it with real data. Thought experiments are something we can easily get lost in. We can have interactive environments that we don't see as programming and they can be useful, but the discipline of being able to create those models and know that they are doing what we intend for the reasons we intend - that's programming, and people gain that discipline through environments that make them work for it to some degree.