Number of languages known [was Re: Python is readable] - somewhat OT

[Nathan Rice]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Nathan Rice
> <nathan.alexander.rice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Did you miss the part where I said that most people who learn to
>> program are fascinated by computers and highly motivated to do so?
>> I've never met a BROgrammer, those people go into sales.  It isn't
>> because there aren't smart BROmosapiens (sadly, there are), they just
>> couldn't give two shits about computers so programming seems like a
>> colossal waste of time to them.
>
> I have never met the brogrammer stereotype.  I have also never met the
> non-brogrammer stereotype of nerdy solitude (well, maybe once).
> That's all these things are -- stereotypes.  Real programmers are much
> more complex.

I have never met a programmer that was not completely into computers.
That leaves a lot unspecified though.

>> Computers require you to state the exact words you're searching for as
>> well.  Try looking again, and this time allow for sub-categories and
>> synonyms, along with some variation in word order.
>
> Lazy troll.  You made the claim.  The onus is on you to provide the evidence.

I reserve the right to be lazy :)

As part of my troll-outreach effort, I will indulge here.  I was
specifically thinking about some earlier claims that programming
languages as they currently exist are somehow inherently superior to a
formalized natural language in expressive power.

I think part of this comes from the misconception that terse is better
(e.g. Paul Graham's thoughts on car/cdr), which doesn't take into
account that your brain compresses frequently occurring English words
VERY efficiently, so they actually take up less cognitive bandwidth
than a much shorter non-word.  This behavior extends to the phrase
level as well; longer phrases that are meaningful in their own right
take up less bandwidth than short nonsensical word combinations.

On the semantic side, most people already understand branched
processes and procedures with conditional actions pretty well.  People
"program" other people to perform tasks constantly, and have been
doing so for the entirety of our existence.  The problem occurs when
programming language specific semantic artifacts must be considered.
These artifacts are for the most part somewhat arbitrary, or you would
see them frequently in other areas, and they wouldn't confuse people
so much.  I think the majority of these relate to how the computer
operates internally - this is the stuff that really turns most people
off to programming.

The crux of my view is that programming languages exist in part
because computers in general are not smart enough to converse with
humans on their own level, so we have to talk to them like autistic 5
year-olds.  That was fine when we didn't have any other options, but
all the pieces exist now to let computers talk to us very close to our
own level, and represent information at the same way we do.  Projects
like IBM's Watson, Siri, Wolfram Alpha and Cyc demonstrate pretty
clearly to me that we are capable of taking the next step, and the
resurgence of the technology sector along with the shortage of
qualified developers indicates to me that we need to move now.