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Comment by arxpoetica | Hacker News Reader

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers.

I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

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Theres tons of successes, we just refuse to count them. Photoshop (as hinted in the article), is a super special purpose language for doing image operations. It no longer "looks" like coding, so we don't count it as coding for the masses. Excel is a much more general purpose language used by tons of "non-coders" (and arguably the most popular programming language on earth). Again, doesn't (often) look like normal programming, but then again, shouldn't this be expected? If it looked like normal programming, it would be normal programming and not successful.

Two other more contemporary examples are the Android app Tasker, and the website IFTTT ( https://ifttt.com/ ).

There's something about calling it programming that turns certain people off. I remember a story about a freshman in a physical mechanics class that complained about all the MATLAB code they had to write. The professors retort was that they were free to use a slide rule instead, and that particular freshman stopped complaining.

But you're right. The mere act of calling it programming is somehow a problem. It's as if doing programming pigeonholes you into being a programmer until the end of days.

Kind of like how calling programs for proofs seems to make most programmers uneasy. (Not that most programs that you'll run into are proofs in any interesting sense.)

> The mere act of calling it programming is somehow a problem.

There are some words that carry with them unshedable connotations that people want to get away from so strongly that they will call themselves something else at the first possible instant. "Programmer" is one of them.

"Poet" is another. No one makes money from poetry because as soon as a poet makes money they are something else: a musician, a performer, a copy-writer, whatever.

Just don't call them a "poet", because "poets" are poor, sad people with no future, just as "programmers" are neckbearded nerdboys who smell bad, and no matter how many programmers (or poets) fail to live up to those stereotypes people will continue to impose them on reality come hell or high water.

Until one shoots out the top. Then he/she can be a "poet" again.

Excel is a perfect example. The core Excel experience is basically functional programming on a virtual machine with a matrix address space laid out visually right in front of you. It even looks like traditional programming if you dive into the VBA stuff, which plenty of non-technical specialists, including MBAs and managers, do on a regular basis in the pursuit of solving their problems.

Any specialist user willing to invest some time in learning their tools can do this. A culture develops around it.

And replying to parent: those efforts around teaching 'civilians' to code are probably misguided. The investment needs to be in adding scripting and programmability into existing line of business tool, not on encouraging people to sit in front of an isolated REPL disconnected from any business value or context.

+1; many companies have tons of internal processes which rely on Excel sheets. When these become painful enough, another team (internal applications) can come in, evaluate the situation, and build out a custom solution which uses an actual database, but Excel still provides a ton of value, since at the most basic level it's a database table with no validation and a free-form schema.

The downside is, when all you have are Excel sheets, everything looks like rows and columns (and not e.g. objects with behaviors). If Excel had more robust import/export mechanisms that normal users could understand (e.g. built-in REST client with JSON + XML serializers + many database adapters w/ lots of helpful wizards or tools to guide you), it'd be way more powerful. Then again, if someone is at the point where they'd be able to look at some JSON and compare it with their spreadsheet and be able to describe the mappings, they're possibly better off going to some training sessions on ${your favorite programming language} to learn how to do this the easy way.

Nicely put. It's actually rather agile: Excel becomes a prototyping tool to allow the business users to describe what a solution looks like, helping to guide development of that custom solution. Sadly few IT organizations are confident enough to trust their users and work like this, instead starting from zero with a pedantic requirements gathering process before building something less flexible and useful. The problem is partly a lack of domain knowledge in the internal apps team (which is understandable), and partly a kind of technology-first arrogance which prevents that team from making use of the intellectual capital originated by the business in their spreadsheets and processes (which is inexcusable really).

Ideally, an organization comes to understand that Excel is a fantastic tool at the frontier where the business needs to adapt rapidly, but once a process is fixed, replacing it with a fixed system is worth the tradeoff in reduced operational risk.

To your second para., much of that falls to internal apps to provide decent RESTful APIs across their systems. Some companies are doing this, in the process getting to a point where the Excel frontier is just analyzing and reporting on data, not acting as a source in its own right. Then you have traceability for every data point in the organization, and you're in a pretty sweet spot operationally.

Something can't be "basically" functional programming without first-class functions.

It seems more like a non-functional declarative vm to me.

It's more a one-way dataflow language.

Thanks to John Foreman's book "Data Smart" I now regularly test small-scale machine learning problems in Excel. Sure, a developer will translate the end result to scikit-learn or AzureML, but this is stuff that's easily available to even mildly-technical enthusiasts.

Remember when search engines had Boolean operators?

Honestly I never heard of search engines working with boolean operators.. I just did a quick search and found this interesting article which gives information about websites using AND, OR, NOT, venn diagrams and concept declarations to deacrease the search node graph....How long ago this search mechanism terminated ???

I... you're trolling, right? Before Google rose to fame, Altavista was probably the most popular, but in order to find what you wanted, you frequently had to add AND, and NOT to your searches, and still needed to dig in a dozen pages in order to find what you were really after. Then Google came along, and the rest of them died.

I thought Google did it, too, for a while.

I'm pretty sure they did, because I never used a search engine before Google and I remember using boolean operators.

They still do: https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Possibly not trolling; if the parent post is the usual age of a new college grad (22 years old), Google had eaten the search market by the time they were 10.

I would say that Photoshop is a toolbox of predefined tools. If using that is coding, then people are also coding when they choose and use a screwdriver, some sandpaper, a hammer and some glue in succession from their physical toolbox to get a job done. That the operations happen electronically and that they are implemented as complex mathematical transformations of pixels doesn't change that.

Excel isn't much different in my view: most people are only using a very limited set of predefined tools to get a job done. Often badly: it is well known that there are many bugs in important, company critical Excel sheets. Excel seems like coding because it is mostly used to perform the fundamental mathematical operations we all associate with coding. But if that is coding, then so is constructing a Rube-Goldberg machine for a specific task from the parts you happen to have available. A nice exercise in problem solving under constraints. Which certainly has something in common with coding. But that doesn't make it coding.

Well, if you wanted to be absurdly pedantic, you could call instructions in an architecture predefined tools, or protons and electrons.

I don't think it matters if the tools are predefined - what matters is that they can be used together to build a system greater than the sum of it's parts.

Yes, and that is exactly what very rarely happens when people use Photoshop or Excel and happens in coding all the time. Which isn't strange, because the former two aren't intended for that, while the latter is.

I think it can matter a lot whether the tools are predefined, because the exact nature of those predefined tools determines whether they are easily composed into something greater than the sum of its parts. You need iron ore, wood and a forge to construct a different hammer. Of course you can cobble something hammer-like together with the tools in your toolbox at home, but it won't be like the hammer forged afresh from more fundamental parts better suited for that purpose.

So, Excel is not coding, but an Excel sheet can have bugs?

Yes, just like a piece of furniture you built can have bugs

Using Photoshop is instructing a computer to perform a series of operations, necessarily fairly high level ones, but conceptually not that different from text-based coding. I agree it stretches the definition pretty thin: where's the control flow? Conditionals?, but are those things really foundational characteristics of programming languages or are they simply the equivalent 'predefined tools' that, say, C gives us?

Excel is much closer to traditional programming: it's basically a purely functional language (absent VBA), but instead of a linear description of the program in a text file, you're in effect embedding functional code inside a virtual machine's memory.

EDIT: I suppose an important question about Photoshop is, can you do computation in it?

I concur with your assesment. The point is not to turn a syntax into an AST into processor code. The point is to provide things of value and 'easy' computing platforms targeting users who are not professional programmers create tremendous amounts of end user value.

Sadly, when I point this out professional programmers often go 'pffft - that's not real programmming' as if being knees deep in stack traces and gigantic code bases was a something with intrinsic value.

I'm not sure I agree with you about Photoshop. Perhaps (probably) there are photoshop macros or pipelines that are closer to programming, but most people use Photoshop purely in an interactive mode. They enter commands directly, and the logic stays in the users' heads, not in the computer.

Photoshop is more like a REPL tied to an image-processing library than it is a programming language.

A Photoshop "program" would consist of the composition of image layers, adjustment layers, blend modes, styles, masks, text blocks, shapes, paths, and so on. You "run the program" when exporting to a bitmap format.

It probably doesn't help to think about it that way when using Photoshop, but it might be a useful mental model for developing Photoshop, or as an example of how a general visual programming language UI might work. Importantly, Photoshop does not give you a bunch of little boxes with arrows crisscrossing everywhere like all the clumsy and disappointing visual programming experiments I've seen.

Maybe "visual programming" is like "AI". Whenever you make something that actually works, it goes by some other name.

Maybe. But by that standard, using a Xerox machine is programming because you can layer some pieces of paper and transparencies together and then copy it onto an image on a single sheet.

I think to be programming, there has to be some kind "logic" (conditionals, mathematical functions, loops, etc.) embedded in the structure (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom) and I'm not sure Photoshop qualifies.

I don't think I would consider the arrangement of paper to be a program because it doesn't change the way the machine itself operates (though perhaps one could argue it does at the level of photons and toner molecules--or that a computer just blindly "goes through the motions" with its inputs as much as a copier does with its paper input). But inputting the number of copies, darkness, collation, etc. surely counts as programming in the familiar sense.

To me, the defining feature is automation. A "programmable" system is one where smaller actions can be composed into larger ones and saved for invocation later (by name, in response to some event, etc). I don't know much about photoshop, but judging from what people have said, it seems to meet this definition.

I will concede that "programming," in the sense of "I've been programming for the last couple hours" or "He isn't very good at programming" implies the use of a Turing complete language. Photoshop would probably fail here, along with more programmer-y things like writing html.

I have read elsewhere that programming is giving the computer instructions. So clicking the close button on a window or typing into a word processor is technically programming (although it is not coding). My search-fu was unable to find that though.

Sometimes the boxes-and-lines metaphor for creative design is what you want... professional video products work like this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/fusion

It's like After Effects meets Simulink.

Re: pipelines, you can feed external data into a Photoshop doc [1]

[1]: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/creating-data-driven...

Yep, great examples. Also, pretty much any experienced Photoshop user will create their own actions to automate common operations. And then you have things like workflows in Alfred.

The trouble is that so much of what we call "programming" is actually the process of identifying all the implicit assumptions that go along with an idea and making them explicit. In other words, if you knew what to ask for in an unambiguous way then most of the "programming" would be done already.

I'm working on a longer essay but that's the short version.

This is a driving force behind the pedagogy of SICP -- to think in recursive functions. If you can break down your task into sub-problems and describe them clearly you just have to put a few parenthesis around it.

Programming isn't so much about the "code" or syntax; it's semantics and intent aligned with the machine.

If you can express your problem clearly then the program practically writes itself.

Sounds like I should sit down with a copy and finally get past the first chapter.

Not just the right-brained. I want that as a professional software developer. I want a computer that will do what I thought, instead of what I foolishly typed.

Basically, I want a computer as smart as a good junior dev so I can just yell my brilliant ideas at it, and it will do the dirty work for me.

That's only because you think your thought exists and is correct. Programming forces you to confront the fact that it isn't, and that there are many aspects of it that you've overlooked.

So ve wants a computer that can ask for clarification and point out edge cases, like a good junior dev can.

Also one that can figure out the edge cases on its own, because fuck that shit... it's a really simple idea, why can't you make it work?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

That's not exactly it though. The mistake is in thinking that your idea is detailed when it merely feels detailed.

Somewhat similarly, entheogens do not really give you profound ideas so much as the feeling that the ideas you are contemplating are profound.

This may be the reason, but doesn't have to be and often isn't. If you can explain your idea to another person, and know when they've executed it, why is that not evidence of your thought existing? Why is being able to translate your idea into the unnatural constraints of programming languages as they exist in 2015 the arbiter of correct thinking?

I remember someone referring to this as "intent driven programming". I once worked for a company that made a business rules engine. The idea was to describe a flowchart to the system and the software would ask what you wanted to do at each step of the flowchart in a top down manner till you fleshed out the whole program ..

Top-down programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design - the Silver Bullet programming methodology of the 1970s.

Charles Simonyi attempted to design a company around this awhile ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming

That's likely AI-complete.

As someone who has worked with junior devs before, that sounds like an absolute nightmare.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with being junior. But the rate that requirements are misinterpreted even by intelligent humans is, I think, a fundamental reason why programming isn't doable by the masses yet.

It's not because computers are hard, it's because knowing what we actually specifically want them to do is.

   I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

I don't see it ever happening: because the bar of expectations rises at the same rate at which the tools improve.

For example, think about what the NYTimes website looked like in February 2000:

   http://web.archive.org/web/19990202013312/http://www3.nytimes.com/

That probably took millions of dollars and a team of engineers back in the 2000. In 2015, a reasonably computer-literate person could do something close to that with SquareSpace or Wordpress.com in probably.... a week?[1]

But that site would never pass muster in 2015. Something 10x (if not 100x) more complex is required for NYTimes.com in 2015, plus various native apps, plus a subscription service, and so forth. So you still need a team of engineers...

____ [1] I'm talking about the act of putting the articles onto a website, not reporting and writing the articles, obviously.

Scratch seems to me like an example of what a "real programming language for everyone" could look like.

Indeed, Lego Mindstorms is based on a similar principle, and it's used for programming robots!

I don't understand why people believe 'everyone' should be able to write code without much trouble. Virtually every activity requires focus and exercise to learn. Example: you can't just take a hammer and start building furniture or you will create a mess. If you want something nice and useful, you need to think about what you want to build, how you are going to construct it, which materials you need, which tools you need. You need to experience how the materials behave, try out certain subconstructions, research what specialized tools exist. I believe this idea that 'everyone' should be able to code is like expecting everyone to be able to build furniture. If you want to, you can learn how to build furniture, but it's not easy and will never be easy. Why would coding be any different?

I believe one area of improvement for the excessive need for precision (most of us can agree that it is excessive) is that our current tools don't use context information enough. Humans deal a lot in uncertain areas and context is what helps us.

Love it or hate it, Meteor has empowered a number of sales-types and small-business owners to create real tools to solve their own real problems.

I've seen it happen in front of my own eyes!

I omitted: ...and create so many new problems there will be years of work in it to clean the mess up.

Been in "IT" for a few decades, I've seen it happen in front of my own eyes time and time again.

The only self-help tool that has lasted so far has been the spreadsheet, and even that has gone horribly off the rails in many companies.

Haha, agreed. I'd argue there's a strong chance of that happening with any tool meant to give non-professionals a 'professional' result.

WYSIWYG web editors, divorce 'kits', many DIY 'kits' for home improvement, etc. Something inevitably goes wrong and the lawyer / contractor wonders just why the hell the client didn't just call a professional in the first place.

The wrong people are working on this problem. The only ones who think about it are typically programmers who have made their peace with the machines as they are today. The interface of code seems simple and logical with little reason to try to improve on it. It would take a team of artists, musicians, human factors engineers, ethnographers and some clever computer scientists to do it. Such an enterprise would be high risk and very difficult to fund because of it.

The precision required in programming makes it hard for the right brained person who won't meet the computer at least part of the way.

I'm reminded of rms's anecdote about secretarial staff learning to write Emacs macros at MIT because they didn't realise it was programming.

This suggests that current, important and well-meaning attempts to get non-programmers to meet code head-on as code may be misguided. Programming is generally easier if you're not thinking about how much it isn't something you do.

Precision is not the only important element in programming. There's a level of abstraction, such as found in the field of semiotics, that is highly important to the world of computer science.

I don't believe that there is no such thing as a right brained person. I think this is a cultural myth. Same as, "you only use 10% of your brain's power". These, and similar, are false memes - iow hokum.

ah crap, no -> any (how embarrassing (and how the hell?))

Not likely.

I've seen non developers try to write specs in whichever format they like: word, excel, drawings, hand written, in speech, mockup tools, anything. They decide exactly how they want to express their idea without any constraints. And yet, they always fail.

There are always too many edge cases they do not think of. They only cover the "happy path" and quite often not even that. Just take the email conversation from the article as example, they didnt even touch the subject of implementation and it was already jibberish even for a developer. You need someone to actually sit down and squint their eyes over something, do research and run some test cases for a few hours before these emerge. Once you start doing this you are already by defition a software developer.

Taken to the extreme, could you not consider raising a child the ultimate programming exercise for humans?

Perhaps the "right-brained" are already very good at programming other people, working with faulty, non-deterministic, somewhat chaotic computing environments where "left-brained" patterns of software development fall short....

AI that takes natural language as input as spits out binaries for you =P

"something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati."

Yes, a real quantum computer. As long as we're dealing with 1's and 0's, there's an insurmountable barrier for those who would get creative with computing.

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