[HN Gopher] I learned the language of computer programming in my...
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I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s - what I
discovered
Author : pseudolus
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-08-31 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| Rendello wrote:
| > [V]alues and assumptions contained in programming languages
| inform the software that's written with them and change the world
| accordingly. By the time I'd learned that Brendan Eich, author of
| JavaScript, is an anti-vaxxer and was a supporter of a campaign
| to have same-sex marriage nixed in California, I wasn't
| surprised.
|
| I don't particularly associate Javascript with any brand of anti-
| vaxxing, anti-same-sex-marriage movements or values. Is this just
| a jab at Javascript being "bad" so of course its authour is also
| "bad"?
| erehweb wrote:
| Pretty much. He's saying Javascript is an ugly language, and
| that this is not a surprise, as Eich's views and actions are
| similarly ugly.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Kind of like homeopathy where water supposedly has a "memory"
| of the substances previously dissolved in it.
|
| Inanimate objects apparently have a memory of their
| designers' political opinions.
|
| I can't say I know who designed even 1% of my possessions,
| let alone their opinions, and I would bet that the author is
| the same. So is it knowing who the designer is that's the
| issue?
| smodo wrote:
| Really makes you wonder how we put up with ReiserFS for so
| long.
|
| Looks like the author has decided to sell his book by looking
| at political dimensions of programming. Nothing inherently
| wrong with that but among programmers it hardly feels like a
| novel or interesting idea.
| djaouen wrote:
| As someone who has been at it for 25 years, I still learn
| something new about programming every day. It really does satisfy
| some deep curiosity within me, and I am glad one can partake even
| (as in the author of the article's case) after 50!
| cjs_ac wrote:
| This has a very 'Victorian anthropologist' vibe. It's not the
| 'point and laugh at the freaks' undertone of, say, _The Big Bang
| Theory_ , but it's clear the author is very much a humanities
| person who hasn't noticed that hard sciences people have a very
| different view of the world.
| jpmoral wrote:
| As someone who loves both can you explain the two very
| different views?
| smodo wrote:
| >> What if there was something about the way we compute that was
| at odds with the way humans are? I'd never heard anyone suggest
| such a possibility (...)
|
| What? That's the premise of almost all techno-dystopias, a slew
| of horror movies etc.
| interstice wrote:
| Interesting take, thinking maybe the author would like ruby.
|
| In my world view being able to program is a bit like having an
| infinitely long lever. The results of this on the world at large
| is what you might expect from going around handing out infinitely
| long levers.
| sarreph wrote:
| > Just looking at JavaScript, with its ugly flights of brackets
| and braces and unnecessary-seeming reams of semicolons, made me
| miserable.
|
| Who's going to tell them you don't need the semicolons?
| ergonaught wrote:
| Didn't discover the value of concision or brevity, apparently.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Here's what I learned from reading fiction: it's best not to go
| too deep into the authors' biographies, because it may spoil the
| joy of reading their writing. Some are alcoholics, philanderers,
| liars, or arse lickers. They are mostly skint, always hoping to
| be the next Hemingway and forever ruining literary cafes' budgets
| by ordering one coffee per day and spending hours hogging the
| table and arguing about style. Some embellish their biographies,
| but if that's what sells books, so be it. They typically form
| closely-knit cliques and have strange rituals and their own
| vernacular. Some are racist--there is a contemporary English
| fiction writer who cannot stop himself from making sure that
| whenever he needs an idiot, a crook, or a thief in his stories
| then the reader is explicitly told that it's an Eastern European,
| even if that fact has nothing to do with the story. A darling of
| the literary column in the English press. Of course, he is.
|
| Software developers rarely venture into that world, because the
| pay is crap and the challenges are all to do with who you know.
| Writing is also one of the most closed and xenophobic guilds.
| Count on the fingers of one hand contemporary non-English writers
| writing and publishing in English without the help of a
| translator who are invited into the English literary coteries.
| One hand will be quite enough.
|
| As a software developer I also learned that our profession
| attracts the kind of moron who would never be allowed to practice
| chemistry or civil engineering in professional capacity. You can
| wake up one day to tell yourself that the ad about learning to
| code in Python was actually a sign from above and you are ready
| to make megabucks the moment you finish your online course. You
| don't know what you don't know and instead of learning more about
| the art and science of designing, writing, and testing software
| you focus on a few people who do not conform to your worldview.
| You are surprised that software developers have a wide variety of
| views, body shapes, or sexual preferences. Being a writer, you
| feel compelled to write about it. That's how you lay bare your
| entitlements, your feeling of superiority for having mastered the
| rules of grammar and navigation of the impenetrable, permanently
| undrepaid world of literary hierarchies. The world of people who
| live in horror of someone mastering the rules of the language
| better and replacing the on the shortlist for the Booker prize.
| Unlike software developers who want more people to master their
| favourite language, because the more popular it gets, the more
| opportunities they will have.
|
| (If the above doesn't make sense, do not worry. I too don't know
| why the writer-coder brings people's personal views into the
| discussion of software development from the point of view of an
| English major.)
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