I see your point, but it's still just different characters in a text file. It's still the same medium.
Computer programs carry more information today than any other form of communication in human history, but they've always been (with few exceptions) text files.
Compare that to the information carried through artistic media. You can paint, sculpt, sketch, photoshop, or screen print and they're all just different kinds of visual artistic expression. Why is there only a single dominant form of programmatic expression?
Is it due to the exact nature of programs? That we need to tell machines precisely what it is we want them to do? Could we write a programming language where we only describe the jist of what it is we want to accomplish and let the interpreter figure out the rest?
It's pronounced Diane. I do data architecture, operations, and backend development. In my spare time I maintain Massive.js, a data mapper for Node.js and PostgreSQL.
The closest conversation we have here is "declarative vs imperative".
In frontend world, ReactJS came around to beat the drum claiming its declarative nature, which is fairly true in that you define possible end states and let the program figure out how to make the right changes.
It was a pretty big deal, but yeah, not that transformative.
I think text-based characters are just so damn useful for telling the computer what we want to do. People are so damn good at typing in general, the draggable modules thing is really hard to draw new power from.
It seems like the best tooling in software is augmentative rather than replacing. Linters and autocomplete seems like the kind of intelligence with the most potential to build on top of, and it's generally progressive enhancement allowing you to go all the way down to a text file if you need to.
GUIs that compile to code tend to result in gobbledigook that makes it hard to go in both directions. Apple has still been trying stuff like this for a while and the latest iteration might be more of a happy medium...
I want to think there is a big leap we can make that is entirely outside of the normal way we code, but I just don't think it's feasible to leap right there. I think it's a one step at a time thing that takes decades and decades, because big leaps can just lack so much edge case coverage we care about.
It's pronounced Diane. I do data architecture, operations, and backend development. In my spare time I maintain Massive.js, a data mapper for Node.js and PostgreSQL.
I think art is not the place to be looking for inspiration -- programming languages, while quite restricted in scope, are languages, and in thousands of years we've only come up with so many modes of linguistic expression. It's pretty much just speech and writing, and writing is clearly the superior of the two for this kind of purpose.
Although it's interesting to consider programming a computer by means of tying quipu...
I suppose that's true re: writing. But surely there's at least a better way to communicate these ideas.
Sometimes I find myself looking at the array of languages and paradigms available and thinking "that's it?" But then again, the book was invented a few hundred years ago and that's still going strong.
Maybe people will still be writing FORTRAN in 2520.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
I think art is not the place to be looking for inspiration -- programming languages, while quite restricted in scope, are languages, and in thousands of years we've only come up with so many modes of linguistic expression. It's pretty much just speech and writing, and writing is clearly the superior of the two for this kind of purpose.
And, even in writing, it's pretty much just been glyphs and script ...and it's really only recently that we've sorta started to handle other-than-ASCII something resembling "well".
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
I see your point, but it's still just different characters in a text file. It's still the same medium.
Computer programs carry more information today than any other form of communication in human history, but they've always been (with few exceptions) text files.
Compare that to the information carried through artistic media. You can paint, sculpt, sketch, photoshop, or screen print and they're all just different kinds of visual artistic expression. Why is there only a single dominant form of programmatic expression?
Is it due to the exact nature of programs? That we need to tell machines precisely what it is we want them to do? Could we write a programming language where we only describe the jist of what it is we want to accomplish and let the interpreter figure out the rest?
You mean like SQL? 😄
The closest conversation we have here is "declarative vs imperative".
In frontend world, ReactJS came around to beat the drum claiming its declarative nature, which is fairly true in that you define possible end states and let the program figure out how to make the right changes.
It was a pretty big deal, but yeah, not that transformative.
I think text-based characters are just so damn useful for telling the computer what we want to do. People are so damn good at typing in general, the draggable modules thing is really hard to draw new power from.
It seems like the best tooling in software is augmentative rather than replacing. Linters and autocomplete seems like the kind of intelligence with the most potential to build on top of, and it's generally progressive enhancement allowing you to go all the way down to a text file if you need to.
GUIs that compile to code tend to result in gobbledigook that makes it hard to go in both directions. Apple has still been trying stuff like this for a while and the latest iteration might be more of a happy medium...
developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/
I want to think there is a big leap we can make that is entirely outside of the normal way we code, but I just don't think it's feasible to leap right there. I think it's a one step at a time thing that takes decades and decades, because big leaps can just lack so much edge case coverage we care about.
I think art is not the place to be looking for inspiration -- programming languages, while quite restricted in scope, are languages, and in thousands of years we've only come up with so many modes of linguistic expression. It's pretty much just speech and writing, and writing is clearly the superior of the two for this kind of purpose.
Although it's interesting to consider programming a computer by means of tying quipu...
A quiputer. 😉
I suppose that's true re: writing. But surely there's at least a better way to communicate these ideas.
Sometimes I find myself looking at the array of languages and paradigms available and thinking "that's it?" But then again, the book was invented a few hundred years ago and that's still going strong.
Maybe people will still be writing FORTRAN in 2520.
I do most of my book reading through audiobook these days.
I wonder if a programming language optimized for audio consumption that can be effectively reviewed through one's ears.
idea.🤔Morgan Freeman reading LISP sounds terrible and soothing at the same time.
"Open parenthesis, open parenthesis, open parenthesis..."
Haha!
And, even in writing, it's pretty much just been glyphs and script ...and it's really only recently that we've sorta started to handle other-than-ASCII something resembling "well".
Maybe not FORTRAN, but definitely COBOL. :p