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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not true

programming computers is like writing stories, except the compiler for programming is a dumb CPU not a living human brain

every human who has been appropriately taught has learnt to read and write. They can also learn to code. And pretty much the same proportion will make a living coding as do make a living writing stories.

But the future of humanity will be immeasurbly enriched by all it's people able to express them selves in code, just as it has been enriched by it's people able to read and write.

It will be a good future.

Now stop wondering if we are special, and start worrying how we can make a world that is so rich, so peaceful that the worst horror it's children face is curly brackets.

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Programming involves the ability to deal with abstraction, a lot of it. Just like most kids hit a wall in calculus (which is really their first exposure to abstraction), most kids hit a wall in programming. Those that can deal with abstraction well get programming.

Programming benefits from the ability to tell stories, but many programmers are not great story tellers (i.e. communicators), its a skill that you have to learn separately, then your programming improves because of it.

I'm sure many more people make a living programming than telling stories (journalism, authors, etc...), but if you have evidence otherwise, would like to see that. Anyways, that has more to do with demand (for programmers vs. authors) than supply (those able to program or write).

Programming is applied algebra. Some can't grasp "x=3"; that's a non-starter.

I think that this is confusing domain applications of concepts (algebra, abstraction in mathematics) and the same concepts in everyday speech. Everyone gets Proper nouns as variables and understands stories where the two people get their brains swapped. (Identity of objects as behaviour, memory addressing or duck typing)

so, I think most people get writing and symbols involved and that stories carry most of the functions needed for even reasonably complex programming

and that's without teaching children lisp from an early age

There are a class of programming models that exploit that, and they aren't very expressive. At best, they are suitable for casual programs who need to write some code to solve very specific problems, say writing something in Excel. However, serious programming (done by full time programmers) really requires the ability to create new functions.

What's a new function if not "have a bath" or "bathe quickly in the river" - apart from math specific definitions ?

I don't think you can compare it to stories. The only things programming has in common with stories is words and typing. What's different?

A story can't be 'wrong' as long as the grammar is used correctly. There (usually) are no hard requirements on the outcome or even the resource use of a story.

I'd rather compare programming to writing (classic) poems. Poems have a fixed structure, so the author needs to be economical and plan ahead with the syllables he uses and the story elements he introduces. While the outcome is still more or less open, we have to count in the artistic element (which is somewhat missing in programming), so this might introduce enough cognitive workload on the author to compare.

Even then I would argue that everyone can learn the basic structure of a poem and start writing one.

A story can't be 'wrong' as long as the grammar is used correctly.

Sure it can, have a murder mystery where Joe kills bob in the library with the revolver. Only problem is Joe was in Monte Carlo, and bob was Austin at the time of the murder, and there is no twist remote tele-presence robot. Stories must have internal logical consistency for them to work well. Something like Oceans 11 wouldn't have worked if there had been concurrency issues.

"Unreliable narrator" stories can be "wrong" in the way you describe. cf. American Psycho.

There are plenty of stories where unrealistic things happen, eg. JP Donleavy's scene transitions where people melt from one place to another (which are stylistic devices, not sci-fi).

This is a whole rabbit-hole (pun intended ...)

As a matter of fact, doing both, i think you can.

But in my opinion, the question is more : does every single people on earth like programming enough to get into it, instead of getting into something they enjoy more ?

Reading is easy, using an Iphone is easy. Bladesmithing, or repairing engines all day long is difficult, as is programming, as is writing for a living, or any other activity you don't enjoy doing on a daily basis for about 40 years.

It all boils down to (minimum) enjoyment of one's job.

Probably not. However I think there might be more of us if more children got to play with something like lego mindstorms or MIT's scratch or some other sort of fun programming games. I'm actually looking forward to Notch's new game a lot (programmable spaceships with a simulated CPU, ram and stuff). Sounds fun (maybe not for children though).

And i do agree with that. (and Notch's new game too by the way!)

I think I agree, but that Every single person does not write for a living - although writing will at some point be an irreduciable part of their job, because widespread literacy is fantastically useful and value generating

Nope. It is like writing poetry. It is hard and only very few could master the set of skills.

That's interesting, we had the same thought, see my other comment.

I say it's more like writing cartoon music

Most people can't write stories with any degree of competence, though. Certainly not well enough to do it professionally.

Most people can't write well because they don't have the hours of practice underneath them.

Sounds familiar...

There are a lot of things that people learn to do for themselves that no one would pay them to do professionally (cooking, minor home improvements, taking family photographs).

That doesn't mean those skills aren't useful. That picture of your kid might not make the cover of a major magazine, but Grandma is still going to like it just fine. That pot of homemade vegetable soup might not rate five stars in a restaurant guide, but your family is still going to enjoy it when they come inside on a cold day.

Most people are reasonably good at telling stories that are important to them -- telling your kid about what Great-Grandpa did in WWII, telling your buddies about the giant fish that got away...

It depends on what you call programming. If you call Excel work programming then yes, anyone can do it.

But if you mean writing great (usually more complex) software then no ; we evaluate/interview plenty of people, even with CS degrees who cannot program at all. And they had plenty of practice; still they cannot write anything which works over a few lines themselves and they don't have a real understanding of what they are doing (just learned stuff by heart). The end result might 'work' but it's never solid; it will have really strange bugs and no-one understands the code upon reading.

What, how's programming like writing stories? Writing multithreaded database access is exactly like writing a story about a school of wizards, right. The only thing these have in common is that you use a keyboard to type them.

Like with many other professions, some people are just more cut out for it then others. Yeah I know we're all equal.. but the truth is we're not. Programming certainly seems like one of these professions.

In order to make the connection between the two you have to apply a bit of abstraction.

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