gasbag

Programming was in its infancy 50 years ago, but in reality we don't really know what its development arc is. We could be in the toddler stage right now, or we could still be in infancy when compared to future developments in the field. I believe we are much closer to the latter.

There were things being done in the 60s that we still haven't really integrated into our trade. [0] We joke about having to program with hardware switches and punch cards, yet here we are still typing carefully crafted cryptic commands that tell the computer exactly what it is supposed to do, and storing them in linear text files which we have to mentally map to program states. I think there will always be a place for this kind of programming, just as people still use Assembly today, but it's a bit premature to say, "Well, this is it, or nearly so!"

I recall reading that one of the giants of early computing, Von Neumann perhaps, never understood the benefit of Assembly and thought that it was a waste of the computer's time to compile to machine code rather than have a human write the machine code directly. We are working inside a problem domain that we barely understand. I find it hard to believe that we will have the glorious sci-fi future that many of us imagine will come out of advancements in technology without also developing corresponding advancements in how we describe and create and interact with it. One potential example that I am looking forward to learning more about is Luna, which features a visual development environment that is isomorphic to its code. [1]

The implicit goal of programming language and tool development is "How do I make it easier to accurately map 'the thing I want done' into a functioning system?" And our tools are getting better all the time, opening up new avenues of interest and possibility. This is a great time to be a programmer, and I think it's only going to get better, and become more accessible.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4 [1]http://www.luna-lang.org/

Bret Victor has a page on his site about this.[0] The first hit when I searched for "visualization" was:

"The core technologies in energy storage tend to be physics-based, but software plays essential roles in the form of design tools, simulation tools, and control systems. My favorite example is the inexplicably gorgeous Materials Project, a database and visualization tool for material properties, funded by the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program to help invent better batteries."

It's a lengthy page with lots of good ideas, and seeds that might germinate more ideas of your own.

[0]http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

> A pollution tax would certainly help but is far too big of a thing to accomplish in the short-term.

There's no need for a big car tax or a pollution tax. We could just end the massive fuel subsidies we have in the US. Of course that is also unlikely to be accomplished in the short term.

> So the bottleneck would appear to be, not the physical limitations of communication, but the rate at which we can structure information to be consumed by another mind.

Yet the way in which we must structure information surely plays a role in how quickly we can do it, right? I can certainly read faster than I can speak, and I'm also confident that I can read with full comprehension faster than I can listen with full comprehension to someone speaking very fast, like at the end of a medicine commercial or the Micro Machines guy.

Take for example a physics teacher. They are fond of drawing diagrams because it's a quicker and easier way to refer to the concepts in play than relying on words alone. If we had the capability to project the imagery that accompanies our thoughts so that others could see it, I suspect we'd have to do a lot less talking. And in fact we practice this already with feelings and body language--most of us know when we've committed a faux pas before anybody says a word about it.

The same goes for programming: my thought is "i want to get all of the user's preferences", which is surely faster than finding where to put the query, when to call it, and then testing its correctness. This is one of the things that Alan Kay and Bret Victor go on about--getting the machine to be usable at a level that is closer to the problem space than to machine code. I understand what you meant, that typing at 300 WPM won't help you to design a system. But a visual development environment that actually works probably would, because it would let you work at a more conceptual level most of the time instead of typing magic words into a terminal.

> We're arguably the least cavalier about taking life of any life on earth.

Fungi beat us in this respect. Most of them feed exclusively on dead matter.

Commerce that remains internal to a state also shouldn't be regulated by the interstate commerce clause, yet that's been done for almost a century. There are no new heights of sophistry here, US history is littered with examples of convoluted logic to find constitutional grounds for whatever those in (various levels of) power want to do.

I have done the calculations, and you are in fact wrong. I'd show you how, but any seventh-grader could find the mistake in 20 minutes, so I'll let you correct your own homework. I'll be nice and add that dimensional analysis is incredibly helpful.

Someone else linked Sucrose, which has a tree chart. Looks like the expand/collapse nodes isn't working though.

If you want to hear a great example of spatial audio, check out The Quiet American [0] and be sure to use earbuds. He records his environment using two in-ear microphones to get all of the effects discussed in the article: sound shaped by the external parts of the ear, timing differences between the left and right ear, etc.

I remember listening to one recording where he is at the edge of a lake or ocean, and listening while standing with my eyes closed I almost expected to feel the waves around my ankles. It's incredibly immersive, and will work wonders for VR.

[0] https://www.quietamerican.org/introduction.html

> In other news although we can harbor optimistic thoughts for scientists, medical professionals, lawmakers and maybe even politicians all around the globe to do the "right" thing to preserve human life in a currently recognizable form

Why is this the right thing to do? What are you signifying by putting "right" in quotes?

I am reminded of the Hyperion Cantos from Dan Simmons, where most of the human race has declared that nanotech modification of the human organism/germline is a cardinal sin. Meanwhile there is another segment of humans who decided that maybe it wasn't, and they're off colonizing deep space by remaking themselves into a wild range of body types.

In fact if we don't stop dirtying up the planet, we may feel a lot more pressure to adapt our bodies to an environment whose rate of change we can't keep up with. In any event I am sure there will be a segment of humanity that does want to preserve human life in a currently recognizable form, and they should be able to choose that for themselves. That should not stop those of us who want to vary it wildly from doing our thing too!

There are a number of ethical concerns when it comes to these kinds of changes, of course. There is the world of The Windup Girl, where competing agricorps target each other's crops with tailored viruses to wipe them (or their consumers) out. So we will need to figure out how to rebalance our societies in the light of this vast new power. Yet it looks like it may also be the start of a whole new stage in treating human diseases. Imagine a world where mass-produced medicines are mostly replaced by taking some host cells, gene sequencing the target diseases, then programming and re-injecting the cells to eliminate them. I'm not well-versed enough in this stuff to know how far-fetched that is, of course. It sounds like something out of Star Trek. But it's hard not to be optimistic about what it can enable.

> turns you into Tim Leary

Or Doug Engelbart, or Steve Jobs, or any number of the other pioneers of personal computing who cited their psychedelic use as formative or informative.

I also just want to note that there are at least three earnest, substantial responses to your vitriol (I do not count this among them), and no attempts yet from you to respond to any of them. Perhaps you are just in a different time zone and will get to them later.