• Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
    20·
    7 days ago

    i don’t usually cross-post my comments but I think this one from a cross-post of this meme in programmerhumor is worth sharing here:

    The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)

    • wer2@lemm.ee
      5·
      7 days ago

      PostScript was my first thought to. I guess these days WASM also applies.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    32·
    7 days ago

    It’s a balancing act between made for humans and made for optimization.

    Because humans left with their own devices write shit code.

    • Amon@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      7 days ago

      We’ve ‘solved’ that problem years ago: just buy a newer computer or learn to code better

  • 0ops@lemm.ee
    14·
    7 days ago

    I’ve kinda noticed this block when working with non-developers attempting low-code and no-code platforms. Anecdotally, non-coders tend to assume that knowing how to code is the hard part of software development. It’s really not though, there’s tons of resources to learn any language you want for free, and cs students cover all of the basics in their first year. The actually hard part (well one of them) is knowing what to code: the data structures and algorithms. Pro_code, low-code, or no-code, there’s just no way around not knowing how to design a working, efficient algorithm or a clean, scalable database schema. Ironically, for anything but the most trivial problems, the lack of maturity in low-code platforms tends to only make the algorithm harder to implement.

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
    141·
    7 days ago

    Though perhaps when AIs start actually coding, they’re all going to just probably use the native instructions. Because why not?

    • Deestan@lemmy.world
      6·
      7 days ago

      Real programmers modulate their voice and scream precisely into the microphone such that the recorded audio file is valid machine code.

  • Owl@mander.xyz
    152·
    8 days ago

    Text code is overwhelming

    Text is overwhelming (for me)

    I like spaced out, low density information. I can process it better.

    • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
      5·
      8 days ago

      I wish I understood this point of view better. I crunch through information, so I want it to be densely packed. I’d love to know why and how this helps you so I can better help my peers that are like you?

      • Owl@mander.xyz
        1·
        7 days ago

        I don’t think there is a solution

        Maybe codeblocks or the Ue5 visual script thing xD

        • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
          3·
          7 days ago

          I’m not looking for a solution, I want to gain empathy so I can be a better leader for my peers and followers. I want to understand how you get through life and what affects this thing that makes you diverse from me so that I can positively impact the people around me.

          • Owl@mander.xyz
            3·
            7 days ago

            Oh ok

            I’m not a professional in this, I’m afraid that I can’t help you

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
      32·
      8 days ago

      Thank you. If Ikea could write directions in Python, I would be sooooo happy.

      • Amon@lemmy.worldOP
        2·
        7 days ago
        import common_sense
from toolbox import AllenKey

<snip>

allen_key = AllenKey(size=4mm)
allen_key.screw(screw1)
  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    12·
    8 days ago

    Different brains.

    When I took over programming for my robotics team in highschool I switched from whatever visual flowchart bullshit they were using to robotc. I can’t make heads or tails of programming without actual words that literally say what the program does.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
    101·
    7 days ago

    A lot of people really have difficulty with maths and programming.

    The way i imagine it, programming is something non-real, something metaphysical, or how you want to call it. And a lot of people even plainly reject that such a thing meaningfully exists. Think about how many people reject the existence of “spirits”, “demons”, or “god”, based on nothing else but the argument that it is not tangible. Something similar is going on with maths and programming.

    • someacnt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      7 days ago

      People who know math make math sound hard? Eehh, that does not seem to track. Math can become incredibly difficult, and even the cryptic terminologies are a way to alleviate the difficulty.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
      61·
      7 days ago

      Exactly!

      Literally everything we ever came up with is comprehensible by humans, and is likely to be comprehensible by a layman given enough time and making sure prerequisites are filled.

      In fact, it takes a good explanation that would click with a given person’s experience and level of expertise to make anyone understand anything.

      It’s just that sometimes people need that specific thing X, and normally it’s needed to those who have some knowledge in another specific thing Y, and it gets expected that a person needing X knows Y (which is not necessarily true)

      This is especially common in the world of computers. Everyone uses them, everyone has to troubleshoot them, but not everyone is the system administrator, to which 85% of the guides often seem to be addressed.

    • heavy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      51·
      8 days ago

      It… Kind of was though, IR gives us a way to translate higher level concepts to lower (but not the lowest) level representation. It also gives us a way to optimize before machine translation.

      • Laura@lemmy.ml
        2·
        7 days ago

        but it’s produced by a machine (front end) for a machine (back end) so they can talk to each other

        • heavy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          Yeah but a human can still interact with it. Mostly for optimizations or making more translations, but generally “it’s not for humans” would be a bit overloading