Kishotenketsu Programming?

mike_stay asks: "Imperative Programming follows closely the 'outline' style of writing most of us were taught in elementary school. Japanese, however, have a very hard time with that writing style, as they've been trained in the concept of kishotenketsu: stories are usually told by bouncing around between various points of view, which necessarily give different accounts; no attempt is made to say what 'really' happened. 'Good writing style' expects readers to draw the conclusions; writing that is too explicit is not valued. The writing, therefore, tends to be inductive: specific examples precede general principles. The closest thing I can think of to kishotenketsu in programming is functional programming or declarative languages, but then, I'm American. Would other readers point me at other languages with this type of 'eastern' feel?"

Comments

Ki Sho Ten Ketsu

[Gaijin42]

Kishotenketsu is an interesting writing style, and it lends itself to some interesting applications, particularly in philosophy or politics. (Plato's The Republic, while a narritive, goes in a pattern simmilar to Kishotenketsu, in that several unrelated examples or narritives are told, and then a final "bring them together" dialog is presented which shows the relationship between the original narritives, and leads the user to the desired conclusion.

Kishotenketsu is a result of the Japanese aversion to direct confrontation, and consiousness of status. (For another example of status consiousness, a listener of music should not say "That is good music" because that implies that the listener is a superior musician, and in a position to judge the player. Rather, the listener should say something like "Your music moves me"

In any case, programs have a purpose, they DO something. While it certainly makes sense to abstract where applicable, being circuitous is not a good programming method.

I suppose you could do something like go calculate Pi out to find the circumference of a circle that has a radius of the constant that you want to use to calculate your taxes.

But that seems dumb to me :)

On the other hand, this could be a good anti-piracy methodology, if you put a bunch of unrelated code in your serial number validation routine.

Re:Ki Sho Ten Ketsu

[MrWa]

In any case, programs have a purpose, they DO something. While it certainly makes sense to abstract where applicable, being circuitous is not a good programming method.

And many people in business (Americans mainly) would say that being nonconfrontational in conversation seems dumb as well.

The question brings up a good point, especially as more programming leaves the U.S. and heads overseas. What has become generally accepted programming paradigms may start shifting to better match the thinking process of those writing the code. It may be a stretch (for now, anyway) to expect kishotenketsu programming to work - computers can't grok what you really mean without being specifically told - but we will probably see examples of "nonstandard" programming techniques and, eventually, languages in the future.

Obvious answer?

[Dr. Photo]

Ruby is a programming language that was born and raised in its native Japan, which means it may very well be, by definition, what you say you're looking for.

Incidentally, Ruby, though purely-OO, supports nifty things like true closures, and you can end up doing functional programming without realizing it at first [Ruby, of course, is designed with this sort of thing in mind]. It was the realization that I was doing this (or something very close to it), in conjunction with Paul Graham's essays that got me interested in Scheme (a sleek, lightweight dialect of Lisp).

So, perhaps the only real answer is to learn as many interesting programming languages as you can, and use the broadened perspective you gain to make an informed decision for yourself.