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WIC seemed to me more like a self indulgent brain dump than a work of art or a useful piece of information. First of all, it treats code as being somehow unique
by Tloewald 11y ago
WIC seemed to me more like a self indulgent brain dump than a work of art or a useful piece of information. First of all, it treats code as being somehow uniquely impenetrable as a value proposition - when we have plenty of similar examples such as any kind of creative art (why is one script worth $100M and another $0 and how can you reliably create one and not the other?) or highly refined mass produced good (e.g. Silicon chips or soda cans) or valuable insight (e.g. Progress in physics can be very expensive and yet be represented as a few scribbles on a page).
You don't need to reduce a computer to a clock with benefits to explain code any more than you need to explain how a typewriter works to explain writing.
- egocodedinsol 11y ago>WIC seemed to me more like a self indulgent brain dump than a work of art or a useful piece of information Good thing the author has you to let him know!
- Tloewald 11y agoThe author has no shortage of fawning adoration for the piece.
- uptownJimmy 11y agoSuperb writing is ALWAYS deserving of adoration.
- Tloewald 11y agoReally? Surely the content has to be considered. (I love being downmodded for making a simple statement of truth.) And, frankly, the article is well-written, but hardly superb.
- justinhj 11y agoA typewriter is an optional tool for producing a written work. With programming the computer is a necessary object required for converting the intentions of a programmer into both information about the world and actions within it. I think it's fundamental to understanding code to grasp a meaningful model of what a computer is and how it turns key presses into code on the screen and in a file, how it turns the code in that file into a sequence of simple instructions and finally what those instructions do. This article did a good job of that as well as many other aspects of software development.
- Tloewald 11y agoA keyboard is just as optional as a typewriter. When I first learned to program the device I learned on did not have a keyboard in the sense described; many people have learned to program by, e.g. Flipping switches on a panel. The first computer-like things (e.g. Jacquard looms) were programmed by physical objects — indeed one of the first gadgets I learned to program used punchcards you punched manually with a pencil. The digression into keyboards exemplifies the "self indulgent brain dump" issue I am complaining about. It reminds me of "Mathematics made difficult" except that the book in question was humorous and not pretending to make its subject more accessible.
- justinhj 11y agoI didn't mention keyboards in my comment.
- Tloewald 11y agoBeating a dead horse: This article is great for a reasonably knowledgeable programmer to read and think "oh yes, this really nails what a complex and subtle and deep thing programming is, how astonishing it is that when I type a key so much magic happens to even make it appear on a screen, let alone be saved somewhere for posterity, and how amazingly clever I am for understanding all this stuff... mostly". What it completely fails to do is explain programming, or "code" to anyone else. And wasn't that the point?