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Michael26, on 27 August 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:
Here is the link
Okay, I'll bite.
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I was struck recently while I was at the grocery store with my girlfriend, ruffling through stacks of fresh fruits and vegetables to find all the ingredients for a meal. Why can’t coding be more like this? I thought, more like picking ingredients for a meal. Learning C is like learning the genetic sequencing of a tomato. While it certainly is required for the tomato to exist, I don’t need to be familiar with it to slice it and put it together with a list of ingredients. It’s outside the resolution of knowledge required for preparing a meal.
What he's expressing here is exactly what every cut-and-paste coder wishes to have answered: why isn't all of the legwork already done for me? Why aren't there classes that do everything I want done in exactly the way I want them done that I can just glue together?
Software is very complex, and as a result, it would be difficult to impossible to have the cookie-cutter answers for every possible human thought. This is what would be required to make programming "easy".
Aside from that, doing programming in this manner would strip out the ability to be creative and innovative with it, because everyone would use the same building blocks. Someone's still got to build those building blocks, though
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On top of that, if every would-be chef needed to know the genetic sequence of a tomato before he or she constructed a meal, they’d probably never get around to the cooking. In fact, they’d probably never become a chef in the first place, because they, naturally, would not have been a very good geneticist.
This is a poor comparison. Genetics are entirely different from code. For programming, it takes the same skills to create classes as it does to string them together into an effective piece of software. This guy wants the engineering out of software and wants it to be more like design, where everything is visually oriented and you don't have to think so much about moving parts and efficiency.
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In the meantime, the rest of us could benefit from a programming language which doesn’t require years to learn. In short, we need a language for those of us who are skilled in fields other than mathematics. We need a language which embraces a more natural syntax (yes its possible) and a language which allows junior developers to both define and script without using a term-base which has grown to an astronomical size.
Okay, so this guy is basically saying "Everyone should be able to be a programmer". Look at every other profession. They all require study and practice to become effective at. Programming is the same way. Why should it suddenly be so different? Is it because, since it's essentially "writing" (it's not), it should somehow be accessible to everyone? Writing code and learning how software functions is fundamentally no different than building robots or working on a car. It requires knowledge of the tools and moving parts, and how it all fits together. How would someone translate this "everyone should be able to do it" mentality to other tasks? Would they, even?
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Can the complex branches of C be condensed into a series of objects which can be strung together using natural language? I think so, but for the moment it’s far beyond my ability. I do know that we cannot continue down a path of increasingly complexity in programming languages, if only that it will eventually become impenetrable to all but the most dedicated users. This artificial barrier will keep the expression of thousands or maybe millions of voices from reaching users.
Okay, so who wants to volunteer to make painting super simple? How about good writing? Music production? Sure, there are plenty of creative people out there who may have great ideas, but aren't skilled enough in these areas to make it reality either.
In short, as Martyr2 has said earlier in this thread, programming really isn't for everyone.
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