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A Better Way To Program

Posted by Soulskill on from the creativity-by-slider-bars dept.

mikejuk writes "This video will change the way you think about programming. The argument is clear and impressive — it suggest that we really are building programs with one hand tied behind our backs. Programmers can only understand their code by pretending to be computers and running it in their heads. As this video shows, this is increadibly inefficient and, as we generally have a computer in front of us, why not use it to help us understand the code? The key is probably interactivity. Don't wait for a compile to complete to see what effect your code has on things — if you can see it in real time then programming becomes much easier."

4 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. Been There Done That. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been doing this for years with Python's interactive prompt. I write code and test it on a line by line basis as I'm programming when working with unfamiliar libraries. The code that works is then put into a permanent file for reuse as a script or compiled to an executable for distribution to my end users.

  2. Re:Connecting to your creation in Clojure by justforgetme · · Score: 5, Informative

    And here is the vimeo video for those who want to tear their eyes out when
    visiting i-programmer and their 180px content column.

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    -- no sig today
  3. Re:Great but... by blahplusplus · · Score: 4, Informative

    You didn't see the point when he showed how you could find bugs in algorithms as you typed them.

  4. Re:An observation... by Cow+Jones · · Score: 4, Informative
    Around the last ':' character.
    * is a greedy "match as many as you can", and the first .* trumps the second.

    So the result of -- $_ = "foo:bar:baz:qux"; s/(.*):(.*)/$2:$1/; -- would be "qux:foo:bar:baz".

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    Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari