Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Are We Still Writing Text-Based Code?
First time accepted submitter Rasberry Jello writes "I consider myself someone who 'gets code,' but I'm not a programmer. I enjoy thinking through algorithms and writing basic scripts, but I get bogged down in more complex code. Maybe I lack patience, but really, why are we still writing text based code? Shouldn't there be a simpler, more robust way to translate an algorithm into something a computer can understand? One that's language agnostic and without all the cryptic jargon? It seems we're still only one layer of abstraction from assembly code. Why have graphical code generators that could seemingly open coding to the masses gone nowhere? At a minimum wouldn't that eliminate time dealing with syntax errors? OK Slashdot, stop my incessant questions and tell me what I'm missing." Of interest on this topic, a thoughtful look at some of the ways that visual programming is often talked about.
Try Lego Mindstorms and see whether you find it quicker or slower. It's easy to make something simple but once the algorithm gets complicated it is not much easier to decipher than text code, and no faster in my experience. As soon as you want to get serious with the system, you will wish it had a low level system that lets you lay it out in text instead of images.
This is partly the reason why surviving languages use symbols representing sounds rather than images as the Egyptians used. It's faster to write, and possibly faster to read.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I'm stuck on a several-month-long Labview project right now. It's been a terrible experience. I don't know if it's more because of the poorly designed editor, the language itself, or the visual language paradigm. But I'm sure all three of those are part of the problem.
This view is belied by the graphical tools used to design and layout hardware and chips. Higher level languages in particular are largely based on connecting the data flow between various pre-defined blocks or objects - function libraries.
I actually built a primitive graphical Pascal pre-processor back in the late 1980s, which used the CMU SPICE circuit board layout program. Since the output of the program was text based, it could be processed into Pascal code. The model I used was that a function was a 'black box' with input and output 'pins', but also could be designed itself in a separate file.
I never actually finished it, but it was pretty workable as a programming paradigm, and opened up some new ways of looking at programs. For instance, a 3-D structure could be used to visualize formal structure (function calls, etc.) in one axis, data flow in another.
Also, the Interface Builder for the NeXT machine was more-or-less graphical, IIRC only 2-D. It made for very fast prototyping of a new user interface, and the 'functional' code could be put in later. (I saw a former schoolteacher, who had never used a computer until a few months before, demonstrate creating a basic calculator in Interface Builder in under 15 minutes. It worked, first time.)
I think the real issue is in large part a chicken-and-egg problem. Since there are no libraries of 'components' that can be easily used, it's a lot of work to build everything yourself. And since there is no well-accepted tool, nobody builds the function libraries.
Looking at this from a higher level, a complex system diagram is a visualization that could be broken down to smaller components.
In practice, I believe that the present text-based programming paradigm artificially restricts programming to a much simpler logical structure compared to those commonly accepted and used by EEs. For example, I used to say "structured programming" is essentially restricting your flow chart to what can be drawn in two dimensions with no crossing lines. That's not strictly true, but it is close. Since the late 1970s, I've remarked that software is the only engineering discipline that still depends on prose designs.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Actually you can't tell your car to start by turning a key. Turning the key starts a complex series of interactions between the fuel pump, fuel-injection and air intake systems, ignition system and starter motor to get the engine turning over and then to manage disengaging the starter motor and switching from battery to alternator power once the motor's running until you let the key go from Start back to Run. You can ignore all that and talk only in terms of the key being turned if all you want to do is drive the car, but if you need to say diagnose why the car won't start or figure out why it's running rough and has no power you need to delve into the complexity behind just turning the key. You can no longer ignore it and abstract it away. That's the key: not whether it's code or a mechanical system, but the degree of abstraction involved. Most programming languages are seen as complex because they dive below the level of "start the car" and work at the level of "OK, how exactly do I design the drivetrain of the starter motor so it'll rotate the engine crankshaft until the crankshaft starts turning faster than the starter motor is, then automatically and instantly disengage so the engine won't strip the starter motor by trying to turn it faster than it's safe to?" (and that's just one small part of what's needed to make turning the key start the car, and not even the most complicated part).
to what the programmer of the computer programmer envisioned.
I think the story OP should learn some Lisp. Seriously. Just to grok it.
Part of the frustration I had with many programming languages is feeling I was trying to build castles with toothpicks. If I moved the wrong way or wasn't utterly careful, the structure would fall.
Maybe the OP feels the same way since he is talking about feeling a single level away from assembly.
Like the most powerful editors (emacs and beyond) requires commandline. That's just how it is. If you want fast to learn, then you absolutely want a pretty GUI and all that nonsense, but a user will hit his head on a low ceiling if he's a fast learner. Because GUIs just don't do anything but the small tasks envisioned to them. OTOH, commandline is hard to learn but a much higher ceiling.
Put another way, text is abstractions. I say cat, you the reader know roughly what I'm talking about. I didn't have to describe a small furry 4 legged animal. Now if I did a graphical representation of it, I would be limited to the parameters I gave the original cat - fur (there are furless cats like the sphinx), legs (some cats are missing legs), tails (the manx). How would a graphical representation take that into account? Through clunkiness if at all.
It's kind of like the difference between an alphabet and a logographic system like kanji.
Kanji seem like an awesome idea at first. You make a picture of the sun, and voila, you have the sun! And then a picture of the moon, and you have that idea. Moonlight? Combine kanji for moon plus kanji for light and you probably have moonlight!
Awesome right? Yeah it's just fucking great until you realize you have to start making 30 strokes for one word, and that small pics start looking like each other, and that unless you know that very specific kanji, you have no clue how to write it out. And unlike the english alphabet which has 26 letters and once you learn them and combination you can sound out most words, you have to memorize thousands of kanji and even more kanji combinations or you'll get hung up reading highschool level newspapers.
I view CLI like the alphabet and GUIs inevitably like the alphabet and kanji. One is more awesome than the other in theory but in practice...
I used to write articles for magazines as a full-time job. When I first started using the outliner MORE, I found that the task of writing became much, much easier: I would outline the article, then fill in text for each outline item. When I was finished, I would then export the text and there was my article. It let me design the articles top-down, just as a EE designs a circuit top-down. Moreover, as the article would develop, I could shift things around very easily without having to do massive cut-and-paste exercises.
Software design? I do that top-down mostly. I design the top level with functions, then fill in the functions. Lather, rinse, repeat as many times as you need to. The result is a piece of software that is highly maintainable.
One of my biggest complaints about "graphical" programming is that you can't have much on the display -- you end up paging *more* than with a text-based system. It isn't the text that's the problem; its the lack of top-down designing on the part of the human.
Now, one system that I absolutely loved working with had an IDE (text-based) where you deal in layers. When you click on the function name, the function itself comes up in different windows. I found that paradigm encouraged small, tight functions. Furthermore, the underlying "compiler" would in-line functions that were defined only once automatically. (You could request a function be in-lined in all cases, like in C, if you needed speed over code size.)
In practice, I believe that the present text-based programming paradigm artificially restricts programming to a much simpler logical structure compared to those commonly accepted and used by EEs. For example, I used to say "structured programming" is essentially restricting your flow chart to what can be drawn in two dimensions with no crossing lines. That's not strictly true, but it is close. Since the late 1970s, I've remarked that software is the only engineering discipline that still depends on prose designs.
Funny that you should say that. For the last 20 years, the trend in Electrical Engineering is away from graphical entry and toward text based design languages. Hardly anyone designs logic by drawing gates anymore. We use languages like Verilog and VHDL, which look a whole lot like software languages. Even the analog designers make use of Verilog-A or even just Spice, all text based. When it comes down to building a circuit board or analog circuitry on a chip, there is still a manual "compile" step of drawing diagrams and polygons but that is only because the result is ultimately a three dimensional object (well, more lke 2.5D) and it is the only way to be sure you get what you intended. It is not because creating designs graphically is considered convenient.