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Whatever Happened To Programming?
Mirk writes "In a recent interview, Don Knuth wrote: 'The way a lot of programming goes today isn't any fun because it's just plugging in magic incantations — combine somebody else's software and start it up.' The Reinvigorated Programmer laments how much of our 'programming' time is spent pasting not-quite-compatible libraries together and patching around the edges." This 3-day-old article has sparked lively discussions at Reddit and at Hacker News, and the author has responded with a followup and summation.
THE DUMBING-DOWN OF PROGRAMMING (1998): "My programming tools were full of wizards. Little dialog boxes waiting for me to click "Next" and "Next" and "Finish."...Dumbing-down is trickling down. Not content with infantilizing the end user, the purveyors of point-and-click seem determined to infantilize the programmer as well."
"I think a better analogy would be to say that today's programmers are more like a Cargo Cult."
Responses to the recent MS-random-browser thread ("the faulty shuffle is close enough", "this guy's being pedantic", "knowing algorithms is a bad use of company time") are pretty good evidence of that.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/28/1837223
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
From the article: "...it’s a tedious exercise in impedance-matching, requiring lots of time spent grubbing around in poorly-written manuals that tell you everything the code already told you (because it was generated with JavaDoc or Rdoc or whatever), and none of the high-level stuff that you actually need to be told."
Ah, so the real problem is poor documentation.
I work all day in a programming language written by one of the biggest software companies in the world. The documentation is complete, detailed, and accurate. For large things, there's an accompanying "concepts" doc. While I have (very rarely) run into something that needs clarification in some sort of corner case, I've never come across any part of their language, libraries, or objects that wasn't thoroughly documented, with examples.
On the other hand, I don't think I've ever come across an open source product that had barest minimum of documentation. What does exist is typically out of date (and observations of such are met with "read the changelog!" - lame). There's certainly nothing that explains the major concepts in the code - at best, there's some guide to functions or objects, and usually that only because it can be autogenerated. Sometimes there are examples - though more typically, a few mini examples are the only documentation.
Documentation writing sucks. Programmers don't enjoy it. It's highly amusing to me that the two areas that are the least fun for programmers - GUI design and documentation - are the two worst parts of open source projects.
BTW, in the 80s, programmers were excited about OOP because it promised rich object libraries. Someone would create objects to do X and we'd never have to code X again - no one, ever! And now everyone complains programming is just stringing together libraries.
Advice: on VPS providers
What annoys me is that we have had thin clients for decades: using remotely hosted software has been mature for as long as I can remember. VT100 emulation even works across a modem link. Want a GUI? the X Window system has been around for over a decade as well.
I like the Lynx browser: it uses external programs for also most everything. Even things like YouTube can work if you hand off the .flv to a video player. Browsers should not be acting as an OS replacements with their own schedulers. IMO, browsers should not be handling client-side scripting at all: hand that Java Applet off to an interpreter.
Don't get me started on the "pixel perfect" cult.
I agree from a different view that goes like this. Good programmers/software engineers are expensive so companies like to pay cheaper people. To enable use of cheaper people tools and processes are introduced.
One such tool is languages that have buckets of libraries or core tools that the new people merely have to extend or tweak.
Knuth is lucky that most things he needed didn't exist then so using libraries wasn't an option. If everything he needed already existed he'd have picked a different area to work in.
I'd mod you up if I had points.
Most of the code I call "crappy code" is stuff I'm asked to look at because somebody found a reproducible defect, I look at the code, blink twice, and wonder how we haven't had a "oops, all of our data is gone" scenario yet. Fortunately I keep daily backups around...
And, of course, when I ask the original developer to "fix it", they can't seem to figure it out, even when giving step-by-step instructions how to reproduce the defect, over, and over, and over, and over.
I've looked at some of these CGI apps "web developers" put out, and I wonder if they have any brain cells between their two ears. Just using some sort of MVC architecture would be a good start to fixing 99% of the problems I see with shitty web code, and at least keep things somewhat more organized (if only just slightly)
Few programmers start to write a program by designing a new OS, etc., so your analogy is simply a strawman. How about this car analogy: when designing a new car you are allowed to use only already existing auto parts; you are not allowed to custom design hardly any part on the "new" automobile. This is the real analogy with patching together existing library routines to build a new program: connecting together a set of already existing auto parts to make a "new" car. Does this better analogy still sound just fine? Obviously depends on what one is reusing and how complicated that was to engineer.
Speaking as an ex-over-the-road truck driver, it is a bad analogy because truckers do care about what they are carrying. They have to because they have to comply with different weight and bridge laws in each state. Truckers need to know if the load could shift, leak, etc.
And, no trucker wants a load that is not what the manifest says. Makes delivery difficult and if the load is inspected and the contents of the trailer does not match the contents of the bill of lading then the driver might have be in serious trouble.
Shippers may require the route not go over a certain altitude, through certain areas (New York City for one), or require a specific delivery time frame ("You have to be there on Wednesday between 6AM and 9AM").
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.