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Fixing the Pain of Programming
An anonymous reader writes "Light Table is a Kickstarted, open source IDE that's been trying to integrate real-time feedback into code creation. Part of their process has been figuring out how to improve the practice of programming, from top to bottom. They've put up a post about the troublesome aspects of programming that we've learned to deal with and take for granted, but which need solving if programming is to be made accessible for more people. 'Surprisingly, one of the most common difficulties we have heard from beginners is just running code. Even if we were to hand [a new programmer the whole source code] they would likely still struggle to actually use it. They have to install dependencies, compile code, start servers and open ports. At each step the errors are difficult to diagnose and time-consuming to fix.' But these problems extend to experienced coders, too: 'The simplest question we could ask about our application is "what is the current state." Bizarrely, very few programming environments give you any help on this front. Many programmers get by with nothing but print statements.' It's interesting to see somebody working on these issues, instead of accepting that they're the status quo and just part of the experience of programming."
I suppose this is addressed by the old quote "What is the best language for x?"
"I don't know. Which has the best debugger?"
Yeah, but this perception of programming is the real problem.
Programming is not a "pain" if you do it right. Most of the times programming is a "pain" because you are working with code or frameworks written by mediocre programmers who probably shouldn't be programmers. The more accessible you try to make programming, the more mediocre programmers will be encouraged to write code and software that will be a pain to work with.
When you spend 8 hours troubleshooting an open-source project to compile with a third party proprietary library it feels damn good to make it work. Coding is good because it's hard. The higher the stakes the more the accomplishment of that task will make me proud/happy.
Sorry, but no. If I have a known-working source tree that I want to work with just to tweak one tiny nuisance, I want to download it, open the project, make the change, then build/test/deploy.
In gaming, you have the concept of artificial vs natural hardness. When the game makes you do things just right with cheap tricks like an almost unavoidable trap right before boss / end of the level, when it requires pixel-perfect jumps, when it has insanely complex or tedious puzzles to solve, when it has time limits that require you to essentially memorize which buttons to mash and when, when it doesn't allow saves except at completely useless spots, the devs have made it artificially hard because they failed to make it challenging through more natural means.
In coding, we have the same problem, except we don't (usually) do it to ourselves intentionally - And you describe the most egregious example of it, configuring dependencies. I love a good challenge in writing actual code. Optimizing a tight loop cycle by cycle, importing useful numbers from a BOL file that everyone else has given up on, implementing a new (to me) algorithm in language X (I had a great time learning SQL for that reason, because most of my stock tricks from the C world don't translate well). Those all leave me feeling deeply satisfied at the end of the day. When, however, I can't even get the damned thing to build because I have to tweak 17 obscure dependencies:
"Oh yeah, it doesn't work with the newest 2.17.99 release of WidgetBlaster, you need to hunt down 2.17.94"
"Oh, you used the default build parameters for WidgetBlaster? Heh, you have to pass it the undocumented NoFleem flag at compile time"
"Yeah, NoFleem doesn't actually have any effect unless you install the not-obviously-required WidgetFleem library first"
"Well, you can't actually do it in one pass, since WidgetFleem has a circular dependency on WidgetBlaster - So build WidgetBlaster without NoFleem, then build WidgetFleem, then rebuild WidgetBlaster with the NoFleem option".
"Oh yeah, it only works in GCC 4.4.x, they changed the optimizer after that one and it breaks WidgetFleem."
"Did I mention you need to cross-compile it from an OS X machine because a critical buildtool doesn't exist on Windows?"
Shit like that drives me up the wall, I have zero patience for - or enjoyment of - trying to work around someone else's quirky build environment. If your code depends on obscure external packages, include them in your source tree, and include building them in your default project/makefile, period. I don't care if it makes your source tree 2.5GB, because I'll need to download them all anyway, and at least you know the right versions to include.