As someone with a degree in literature, I'm gonna disagree there. It depends on both the novel and the programming.
It’s not.
Novels are fiction by the way.
Yes? What's so important about novels? They're a relatively recent innovation in literature.
I think a reasonable definition of "novel" is a long-form work in prose, that tells narrative stories, often looking at individual families and characters and their development over time. In that sense, novels are not that novel and there are novels preserved from classical antiquity, India's golden age, and medieval China.
By what standard are novels "recent"? The earliest novels we have originated not long after the first books (aka codices) appeared. The first modern novel was written at the same time as the king james bible, over 400 years ago.
The epic and the play are several thousand years older. Novels are the newest kind of literature, even if it has been a few centuries at this point.
They're not the newest kind of literature. Arthurian legends and religious canons are two examples of newer forms, neither of which I think would be typically described as "recent." I could also use the novella, and the anecdote as examples instead.
I see that pedantry is more intellectually stimulating than either programming or reading!
Who will write the tool that scores HN threads by the number of information-carrying posts versus those that are completely irrelevant, off topic, personal rants, ad hominem, etc?
I'd bet that after a certain level of attention, the majority of comments are of that no useful information kind.
Programming is even more recent
I'm not making the claim that there's a widespread decline in programming, or that such a thing would be a negative development.