Someone's just discovered "yield"
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@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
Software programming and design tools are not something that *need* to be made easier for idiots.
The "for idiots" part of this is a baseless insult of 95% of the population of the planet, and in their defense let me reply: fuck you too.
How PHP Became: a story in two sentences
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@Ben L. said:
If there is 1 pregnant woman, the baby will appear in 9 months.
Therefore, if there are 2.365×1016 pregnant women, the baby will appear in 1 nanosecond.It's just simple blakeymath!
Again, what the hell has this to do with my post?
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@blakeyrat said:
@Ben L. said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Ben L. said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
@blakeyrat said:
If you have a 100 coders who can make a task 10 times faster, you've accelerated the world by 1,000 times. If you have 10,000 regular joes who can (thanks to easy-to-use programming environment) can make their tasks even twice as fast, you've accelerated the world by 20,000 times.
Someone get this guy a copy of The Mythical Man-Month before he makes an even bigger fool of himself...
If there is 1 pregnant woman, the baby will appear in 9 months.
Therefore, if there are 2.365×1016 pregnant women, the baby will appear in 1 nanosecond.It's just simple blakeymath!
Again, what the hell has this to do with my post?
If I ask what something has to do with my post, it stops being related to my post even though it is clearly related to my post!
It's just simple blakeymath!
Again, what the hell has this to do with my post?
If I ask what something has to do with my post, it stops being related to my post even though it is clearly related to my post!
It's just simple blakeymath!
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Fuck this thread.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Mason Wheeler said:Someone get this guy a copy of The Mythical Man-Month before he makes an even bigger fool of himself...
I've read it. I don't get the relevance to my post.@blakeyrat said:
If you have a 100 coders who can make a task 10 times faster, you've accelerated the world by 1,000 times. If you have 10,000 regular joes who can (thanks to easy-to-use programming environment) can make their tasks even twice as fast, you've accelerated the world by 20,000 times.
Your assumption here is that the 10k regulars are each doubling a different task, the implied argument is that they aren't. The real problem with the comparision here is you are saying that making code monkeys more productive means increasing the total amount of productivity increased is (code monkeys)*(amount more productive) while others are figuring that the productivity of code monkeys is to automate or simplify the tasks of others, thus they are a total productivity multiplier. Basically as a coder gets more done, many other people get more done and thus total productivity is increased.
It's simply that those arguing are looking at different kinds of overall problem.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
@blakeyrat said:
If you have a 100 coders who can make a task 10 times faster, you've accelerated the world by 1,000 times. If you have 10,000 regular joes who can (thanks to easy-to-use programming environment) can make their tasks even twice as fast, you've accelerated the world by 20,000 times.
Someone get this guy a copy of The Mythical Man-Month before he makes an even bigger fool of himself...
You're missing the point. He's not saying 1 task, 100 coders. 100 coders, 100 tasks, each 10 times faster. The language is somewhat ambiguous, but the 10,000 regular joes (right or wrong) should provide context clues that he isn't talking about ganging up on a single task.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
If he spends every waking hour thinking up better language features and zero time on trying to make his language accessible to users, then he's a great computer scientist doing a great job.
Wrong.If the features are difficult to use, are they really better features? It's a matter of degree and there are always trade offs, but part of good language design is making it easier to do things well using the language than to do things poorly (or worse, incorrectly). It's a difficult balance to make and sometimes it's terribly subjective. I suppose in an era of different hardware constraints, APL made sense. But if you seriously suggest something like that today, you deserve the cock punch you're sure to receive.
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@Buttembly Coder said:
Wait, blakey's an actual person? I thought it was just an account most of you knew the login for, and that you posted whatever you wanted to make more discussion…
No, no, no. It just looks like that. Only one person is actually using that account.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Ben L. said:
It's a rephrasing of the stupid thing you said. What's so difficult to grasp about the concept?If there is 1 pregnant woman, the baby will appear in 9 months.
Therefore, if there are 2.365×1016 pregnant women, the baby will appear in 1 nanosecond.It's just simple blakeymath!
Again, what the hell has this to do with my post?
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@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
If he spends every waking hour thinking up better language features and zero time on trying to make his language accessible to users, then he's a great computer scientist doing a great job.
Wrong.If the features are difficult to use, are they really better features? It's a matter of degree and there are always trade offs, but part of good language design is making it easier to do things well using the language than to do things poorly (or worse, incorrectly). It's a difficult balance to make and sometimes it's terribly subjective. I suppose in an era of different hardware constraints, APL made sense. But if you seriously suggest something like that today, you deserve the cock punch you're sure to receive.
I supposed I should be clear. By 'users' I meant Blakey's mythical "average joe office worker" who wants to automate some task, but by golly, he's stymied by the incredible difficulty of having to learn a programming language to do it. Obviously, good language features shouldn't be difficult to use, for people whose job it is to use them.
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@PJH said:
@blakeyrat said:
In other words: vegetable moo Piccadilly hernia.@Ben L. said:
It's a rephrasing of the stupid thing you said. What's so difficult to grasp about the concept?If there is 1 pregnant woman, the baby will appear in 9 months.
Therefore, if there are 2.365×1016 pregnant women, the baby will appear in 1 nanosecond.It's just simple blakeymath!
Again, what the hell has this to do with my post?
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@PJH said:
It's a rephrasing of the stupid thing you said.
It had nothing to do with anything I said.
@PJH said:
What's so difficult to grasp about the concept?
The fact that it had nothing to do with anything I said.
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@Snooder said:
I supposed I should be clear. By 'users' I meant Blakey's mythical "average joe office worker" who wants to automate some task, but by golly, he's stymied by the incredible difficulty of having to learn a programming language to do it.
You're almost there. You almost get it. Almost. So close.
Here's a hint: do you know what the most successful programming environment on Earth is? It's VBA in Microsoft Office. Now think about why it's the most successful... think hard. Let's hear those gears grinding away. (And note, I'm not saying that VBA is good or should be replicated in other products, but if you think there are no lessons to learn from the VBA experience than you're an idiot.)
@Snooder said:
Obviously, good language features shouldn't be difficult to use, for people whose job it is to use them.
Anybody who has a job involving repetitive tasks should be able to automate them. Anybody. Saying otherwise just makes you an elitist asshole, and we're back to: "the only purpose of computer science is to enrich an already-rich few."
It's hard to believe that the industry that 20 years ago produced things like HyperCard, VBA, AppleScript, etc has turned into... this. Where even proposing that software be made easier-to-use results in mockery and derision from elitist assholes.
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@locallunatic said:
Your assumption here is that the 10k regulars are each doubling a different task, the implied argument is that they aren't. The real problem with the comparision here is you are saying that making code monkeys more productive means increasing the total amount of productivity increased is (code monkeys)*(amount more productive) while others are figuring that the productivity of code monkeys is to automate or simplify the tasks of others, thus they are a total productivity multiplier. Basically as a coder gets more done, many other people get more done and thus total productivity is increased
Look at an even different way...if a person develops something that *eliminates* the need for the "average joe" (or Code Monkey); is that a "good thing" or not......
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@blakeyrat said:
@PJH said:
Aw, bless.It's a rephrasing of the stupid thing you said.
It had nothing to do with anything I said.
It really has you know. If it's not actually what you meant, then it really isn't the fault of your audience that you can't make yourself clear; maybe you could work on it?
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@TheCPUWizard said:
Look at an even different way...if a person develops something that eliminates the need for the "average joe" (or Code Monkey); is that a "good thing" or not......
........................
I'd much rather see a world where the person doing the task, who also BTW has the most domain knowledge and most experience actually putting the task into practice, is the one to write whatever software tool does the task. If you've been spending 5 years doing medical procedure coding, you're the fucking EXPERT on medical procedure coding, and assigning some fresh-out-of-college IT graduate asshole to tell you how to do your job is frankly insulting. Not to mention how awful the end-result will turn out. But because programming is so difficult, that's exactly what happens now.
Writing a good software tool is something like 90% domain knowledge and 10% programming knowledge. What we do is we send idiots like Snooder to school to learn 90% programming knowledge, have them get domain knowledge third-hand or in a 2-hour training meeting, and give them dictatorial power over the end-product. That's bullshit. It's completely ass-backwards. And the tens of thousands of software tools built in VBA prove it. (They also prove that average joes will write the software whether or not they're supported by idiots like Snooder, and they'll write the software whether or not they have any decent tools to use, and our industry is failing all of these people by not providing them those decent tools.)
As an added bonus to my thinking: the less those common joe people have to talk to people like Snooder, the less they'll hate computers by association.
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@blakeyrat said:
Writing a good software tool is something like 90% domain knowledge and 10% programming knowledge.
What about stuff like user experience? I would have lumped that in with the programming knowledge more than domain knowledge. It seems to me that domain knowledge is easier to share than the technical things required to know to make something usable.
At least until we get sophisticated AI that can encompass all of that and make sense and apply what the domain user tells them.
@blakeyrat said:
And the tens of thousands of software tools built in VBA prove it.
I think you're right, as far as people automating local tasks. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't scale well. You end up with something that's only a little better than sheets of paper sitting on people's desks from a system/enterprise perspective. You have files that move around and get out of sync, sometimes becoming more confusing and problematic than when that one person controlled the information. And those individual users generally build their tool to fit their idiosyncratic work process and thinking process so that you can't even give the tool to another worker and expect them to understand it, let alone be productive with it.
You're not wrong to think it would be awesome if people could solve all of their own problems, but we're a long way from that being a really good solution.
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@blakeyrat said:
Here's a hint: do you know what the most successful programming environment on Earth is? It's VBA in Microsoft Office. Now think about why it's the most successful... think hard. Let's hear those gears grinding away. (And note, I'm not saying that VBA is good or should be replicated in other products, but if you think there are no lessons to learn from the VBA experience than you're an idiot.)
Bullshit. You don't get to just throw out an obvious false statement like "VBA is the most successful programming environment on Earth" and pretend that somehow wins your argument.
@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
Obviously, good language features shouldn't be difficult to use, for people whose job it is to use them.
Anybody who has a job involving repetitive tasks should be able to automate them. Anybody. Saying otherwise just makes you an elitist asshole, and we're back to: "the only purpose of computer science is to enrich an already-rich few."
The difficulty in writing code is not and never has been in learning language features. That you don't understand this is what makes me call you a hack.Let's take yield for example. Yield is, itself, not difficult to learn. It's a five letter keyword you use when you want to run through a list of stuff. The difficult part of yield is knowing what lazy or eager evaluation is, understanding Time and space complexity as they relate to algorithms, understanding iterators and generators, and finally putting all that knowledge together to know when and how to use it. That's not something that "average joe" can pick up. Not because it's hard, but because by the time "average joe" has spent the years that it takes to learn that stuff, he's not exactly "average joe" any more.
There are many, many other little pieces of coding functionality like this. Things that rely on a base knowledge of computer science fundamentals to make the job of someone writing code easier and make the code as a whole less buggy and more maintenable. And everyone else understands this, which is why we are utterly mystified that you can't seem to get it.@blakeyrat said:
It's hard to believe that the industry that 20 years ago produced things like HyperCard, VBA, AppleScript, etc has turned into... this. Where even proposing that software be made easier-to-use results in mockery and derision from elitist assholes.
The reason it invites mockery is because we've already BEEN through those 20 years of trying to get "average joe" to become a programmer and found that, unless Joe is willing to take the time to learn the fundamentals, he's never going to be a programmer. We've had VBA, we've had PHP, we've run through the gaunlet of HTML and WYSIWYG editors and rules based logic systems. And yes, they are useful for certain limited things. But they ARE limited, and they have to be limited; and coming here to shit on professionals for using tools that aren't as limited precisely because they aren't simplified or require more knowledge than the average person is fucking unbelievable. The asshole here is the guy who says "this function that people use to make their job easier is shit because it isn't accessible to someone for whom this isn't even their job."
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
Look at an even different way...if a person develops something that *eliminates* the need for the "average joe" (or Code Monkey); is that a "good thing" or not......
........................
I'd much rather see a world where the person doing the task, who also BTW has the most domain knowledge and most experience actually putting the task into practice, is the one to write whatever software tool does the task. If you've been spending 5 years doing medical procedure coding, you're the fucking EXPERT on medical procedure coding, and assigning some fresh-out-of-college IT graduate asshole to tell you how to do your job is frankly insulting. Not to mention how awful the end-result will turn out. But because programming is so difficult, that's exactly what happens now.
Writing a good software tool is something like 90% domain knowledge and 10% programming knowledge.
Thats... I have no words for how stupid that is.
See, my dad has a EMR solution that he uses for his office. I'm not sure if it's been improved since I last saw it, but when I first interacted with it, it was shit. Sure, it collected his patient data, but it broke if you looked at it funny, relied on print settings from MsWord, had to be installed on WindowsXP in 2011. Every day I got called in to troubleshoot some stupid problem with it, I wondered how the hell it managed to be a shipping product.
And that's not the only example. How many examples of supreme WTFs litter this site are based on someone without basic knowledge of programming concepts hacking together a solution and then having that solution fail when it's scaled up? Or be lacking in integration?@blakeyrat said:
What we do is we send idiots like Snooder to school to learn 90% programming knowledge, have them get domain knowledge third-hand or in a 2-hour training meeting, and give them dictatorial power over the end-product. That's bullshit. It's completely ass-backwards.
It would be, if that's how it's done. Instead it's done by having the people with domain knowledge provide requirements and evaluate the end-product to determine if it meets their needs. You know, the way any other professional service works.
@blakeyrat said:
And the tens of thousands of software tools built in VBA prove it. (They also prove that average joes will write the software whether or not they're supported by idiots like Snooder, and they'll write the software whether or not they have any decent tools to use, and our industry is failing all of these people by not providing them those decent tools.)
And the software they write will likely be buggy and unmaintainable and cause a headache for whoever gets assigned to clean the shit up in a decade.
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@Snooder said:
The difficulty in writing code is not and never has been in learning language features. That you don't understand this is what makes me call you a hack.
What does that have ANYTHING to do with what you quoted? When did I say the difficulty in writing code is in learning language features? WTF man.
I can't debate with people who either can't read, or are responding to some invisible telepathic ghost instead of the actual words written on the actual screen.
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@Ben L. said:
@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
Right now, the way to do that is to make the software more usable, not to add obscure programming concepts that only uber-geeks will ever have a use for and re-solve problems that have been solved for decades.
Blub blub blub blub obscure blub blub blub problems blub blub blub
To put this in terms blakeyrat still can't understand,
Let's say you have a database with billions of rows of data. Let's say you want to do a calculation for each row in the database and return an IEnumerable of the values from the calculations. Let's also say that the calculation is more complex than what can easily be done in the database and that you have unlimited time but limited space.
Let's compare the "equivalent" options:
blakeyrat's list:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE simple_condition;. Iterate through each item and add the calculated value to a list. Return the list. Requires O(n) time and O(n) space.yield:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE simple_condition;. Iterate through each item andyield returnthe value. Requires O(n) time and O(1) space.So blakey, how's that infinite memory computing device coming?
In your yield example, how does the interaction with the db work? Are all the rows selected immediately? Is the db hit every iteration?
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@boomzilla said:
I think you're right, as far as people automating local tasks. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't scale well.
Not because it's impossible to scale well, but because the current tools to do it suck ass. And nobody's working to improve them.
@boomzilla said:
You're not wrong to think it would be awesome if people could solve all of their own problems, but we're a long way from that being a really good solution.
I agree it's a long way out, but it's an infinite way out as long as nobody in the fucking industry is even working on the problem!
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
I think you're right, as far as people automating local tasks. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't scale well.
Not because it's impossible to scale well, but because the current tools to do it suck ass. And nobody's working to improve them.I think you just don't notice it, or maybe disagree with some of the innovation that's happening. But really, it's so much more than just tools. These are hard problems to solve, period, and few if any people get it right. And that's all independent of translating actual user requirements from what they say into what they actually do vs what they actually need to do...
Better tools would be great (and they really are getting better all the time. as a whole) but this isn't really a tool problem.
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
I think you're right, as far as people automating local tasks. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't scale well.
Not because it's impossible to scale well, but because the current tools to do it suck ass. And nobody's working to improve them.
You still don't get it. The reason it doesn't scale well is because (for example) someone who doesn't understand time complexity is likely to write a algorithm that is O(n!) and not notice since n is relatively small. Then, when n becomes larger and larger, suddenly the scale issues come to light. Nothing about the tools can fix this. Unless your solution is to block off all O(n!) algorithms. Which is also bad, because it's possible for a O(n!) to be a better choice than an O(n) or even O(1) for other reasons. The point is that the person writing the code has to know which one to choose, how to evaluate them, etc. And even he might have to devise a brand new algorithm just to fit his own ideosyncratic use-case.
What you are suggesting, as has been mentioned long ago, is figuring out a way to have the computer make those choices for you, and do them correctly every time. Which, as was said back then, requires inventing artificial intelligence. And, as said back then, paying for artificial intelligence to solve your problem is no different from simply hiring organic intelligence to solve your problem.
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@boomzilla said:
I think you just don't notice it, or maybe disagree with some of the innovation that's happening.
I don't see it happening. Although some stuff that Microsoft is doing, like Project Spark, is pretty cool. As is this project to "game-ify" the teaching of JavaScript.
@boomzilla said:
But really, it's so much more than just tools.
Of course it's more than just tools, but it sure doesn't fucking help when our "best" tool for something basic like source control is fucking impossible for anybody to figure out.
@boomzilla said:
These are hard problems to solve, period, and few if any people get it right.
Nobody ever claimed it'd be easy.
@boomzilla said:
And that's all independent of translating actual user requirements from what they say into what they actually do vs what they actually need to do...
Actual users will quickly figure out what they actually do when they are the ones implementing what they actually do.
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
But really, it's so much more than just tools.
Of course it's more than just tools, but it sure doesn't fucking help when our "best" tool for something basic like source control is fucking impossible for anybody to figure out.Ignoring your hyperbole, this demonstrates the point on a simple level. First, it requires someone to figure out how to solve the underlying problem. In this case, keeping track of changes to a bunch of text files. We now have tools that allow massively decentralized development and tracking, etc. The tools for dealing with this will catch up. But without figuring out the model of how to solve the problem, the tools are a moot point.
@blakeyrat said:
Actual users will quickly figure out what they actually do when they are the ones implementing what they actually do.
I've met actual users. I believe good AI will happen first.
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@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
Actual users will quickly figure out what they actually do when they are the ones implementing what they actually do.
I've met actual users. I believe good AI will happen first.
QFT
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@blakeyrat said:
It's hard to believe that the industry that 20 years ago produced things like HyperCard, VBA, AppleScript, etc has turned into... this. Where even proposing that software be made easier-to-use results in mockery and derision from elitist assholes.
The problem with all the languages you mentioned is they don't actually make anything easier. They follow the old paradigm and just apply a different syntax facade. They bring nothing to the table in terms of simplifying or abstracting tasks like language features such as generators do. Perhaps if you'd actually used a generator before posting, you'd understand their benefit; What problems they solve and how they simplify efficiency optimization for devs. I know you're really desperate to be right here, but there's a reason dozens of languages support generators and it's not because they're some hot new concept that's been prematurely implemented.
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@Soviut said:
The problem with all the languages you mentioned is they don't actually make anything easier.
The language may not (debatable with HyperTalk), but the tooling built around the languages certainly made a shitload of things easier.
@Soviut said:
Perhaps if you'd actually used a generator before posting, you'd understand their benefit; What problems they solve and how they simplify efficiency optimization for devs.
Wow, you haven't read a single word I've typed in this thread in the last two days, have you?
@Soviut said:
I know you're really desperate to be right here,
Sitting in a cubicle? No. Sorry, I am not.
@Soviut said:
but there's a reason dozens of languages support generators and it's not because they're some hot new concept that's been prematurely implemented.
I don't disagree. That has nothing to do with the point I've been making.
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@blakeyrat said:
It's VBA in Microsoft Office. Now think about why it's the most successful...
It's only successful because it comes installed with software that every professional business thinks they have to have installed to become a professional business.
It's the same reason there are so many questions from linux admins and admin wannabes asking how to do math on decimal numbers in bash.
In both cases, they are using the wrong tool for the job 99.9% of the time, but only because it is the tool that is available from the start.
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@DrakeSmith said:
@blakeyrat said:
It's VBA in Microsoft Office. Now think about why it's the most successful...
It's only successful because it comes installed with software that every professional business thinks they have to have installed to become a professional business.
It's the same reason there are so many questions from linux admins and admin wannabes asking how to do math on decimal numbers in bash.
In both cases, they are using the wrong tool for the job 99.9% of the time, but only because it is the tool that is available from the start.This. And furthermore, it may make programming easy to "non-elites," but that mostly just means it makes bad programming easy. I'm not trying to be elitist whenI say that; I'm being realisitic, as someone who not only builds software but also uses it on a daily basis.
I'd think you'd be the first to realize this, Blakeyrat. Building software well, so that it works well and is easy to use, is hard. It's not hard because the languages and tools available today suck; it's hard because it involves a bunch of fundamentally difficult problems, the sorts of things that tend to be unknown-unknowns to laymen. The sort of stuff where you don't even know you're doing it wrong until you know enough to know to do it right, or almost enough.
If that's elitist, then Mother Nature is an elitist bitch and you ought to be all snarky and snotty at her for designing people that way. Me, I take a more pragmatic view: just don't make it too easy for people who don't know what they're doing to build software badly, and everyone who doesn't end up having to use it will be just a little bit happier.
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@blakeyrat said:
I'd much rather see a world where the person doing the task...
You are missing my point. Look over the past 100 years at jobs which existed which no longer exist (at least at any substantial level), some may be because of computer, but the majority are not. It is simply that someone invented something that made the jobs entirely obsolete, and in most cases put people out of work. Some moved to different jobs and may have prospered, some will have become destitute and lost everything they owned..
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@Snooder said:
I supposed I should be clear. By 'users' I meant Blakey's mythical "average joe office worker" who wants to automate some task, but by golly, he's stymied by the incredible difficulty of having to learn a programming language to do it. Obviously, good language features shouldn't be difficult to use, for people whose job it is to use them.
I was going to post this:
@elitist rant said:Didn't you get the memo? Everyone should be able to program, do heart surgery, fly planes, and, well, just about anything.
But it looks like blakeyrat beat me to it and apparently I'm an elitist asshole for thinking certain tasks should be restricted to those who have or are willing to acquire the requisite background knowledge.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Building software well, so that it works well and is easy to use, is hard.
Going by the experience of working with our users, while building software that allows one person to do one thing once is hard enough, building something that lets many people do many things many times (and all at once) is enormously harder because of the vastly increased number of cross-interactions between everything and everyone. Non-programmers tend to find this all very confusing; they're not used to thinking about more than one thing at once. (Heck, many programmers seem to find this confusing too, going by the problems all of us keep encountering.)The coding part of programming is the easy bit. The hard part is understanding what the program truly ought to be doing in the first place.
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@TheCPUWizard said:
@blakeyrat said:
I'd much rather see a world where the person doing the task...
You are missing my point. Look over the past 100 years at jobs which existed which no longer exist (at least at any substantial level), some may be because of computer, but the majority are not. It is simply that someone invented something that made the jobs entirely obsolete, and in most cases put people out of work. Some moved to different jobs and may have prospered, some will have become destitute and lost everything they owned..Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were 12.
Weren't you the idiot who always used to brag about how great your New York office was, and how you got Intel CPU samples before anybody else, as if we gave a flying fuck? Why don't you go back to that.
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@blakeyrat said:
Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were 12.
Weren't you the idiot who always used to brag about how great your New York office was, and how you got Intel CPU samples before anybody else, as if we gave a flying fuck? Why don't you go back to that.
Actually 66% of my grandkids are that age or older. And stating facts objectively is never bragging...
What you seem to be missing/ignoring is the social ramifications of ones actions. It applies to all aspects of life including technology. In the context of this thread, it applies to the premise that "everyone" should be able to write code, and even to the idea that "programs should be simple enough for everyone to use".
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@TheCPUWizard said:
Actually 66% of my grandkids are that age or older.
Well most people get over your dumb "but what about the jerbs???" philosophy by the age of 14 at the most, so you can excuse my confusion. The Broken Window Fallacy is still a fallacy, even when you replace the window with fancy computin' spreadsheets.
@TheCPUWizard said:
And stating facts objectively is never bragging...
It is when they are completely irrelevant to the conversation and you're only stating them to... brag.
@TheCPUWizard said:
What you seem to be missing/ignoring is the social ramifications of ones actions.
I'm not missing it. The social ramifications of making work more efficient is entirely 100% positive. How else do you explain the huge rise in quality-of-life since computers came along in the first place? It's not coincidental.
@TheCPUWizard said:
In the context of this thread, it applies to the premise that "everyone" should be able to write code, and even to the idea that "programs should be simple enough for everyone to use".
What a shocker: TheCPUWizard takes the Snooder position. WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMIN-- oh yeah everybody.
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
Back that up with a link to a thread where I can see TheCPUWizard bragging. I wish to verify for myself that it was, in fact, completely irrelevant to that conversation and only being stated to "brag", as you've claimed it was.And stating facts objectively is never bragging...
It is when they are completely irrelevant to the conversation and you're only stating them to... brag.
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@blakeyrat said:
Well most people get over your dumb "but what about the jerbs???" philosophy by the age of 14 at the most, so you can excuse my confusion.
WTF?! I don't know how you came up with this, but you should reevaluate that process, because it's not very good.
@blakeyrat said:
The social ramifications of making work more efficient is entirely 100% positive.
Bullshit. For sure, there are negative short term consequences. Long term, it has so far been positive, but will that always be true? As more value is placed on cognitive tasks, many people are less qualified for well paying jobs.
@blakeyrat said:
How else do you explain the huge rise in quality-of-life since computers came along in the first place? It's not coincidental.
It's true, and I'd say it's a net positive, but that's very different from 100% positive. Around the time computers came along, Detroit and its population was doing great. Better than the whole country by some measures. Now it's become synonymous with shithole.
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@boomzilla said:
Long term, it has so far been positive, but will that always be true?
What's more, long term is a sufficiently long scale that we can't really be sure about it all that much yet anyway. I'm not sure that we can say that all aspects of the industrial revolution are all positive (OK, to be more specific, the technology of the Bessimer Converter) and we're largely able to evaluate that now. The coupling of telecommunications and computers? Much much newer, and some really subtle effects too. (For example, reducing the proportion of the population capable of holding down a real job might not be a good idea in social stability terms.)Proving net positive is much easier, as that opens up using proxy measures like the economy for actual positive-ness (whatever that means).
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@blakeyrat said:
...Fallacy...
@blakeyrat said:How else do you explain the huge rise in quality-of-life since computers came along in the first place? It's not coincidental
Talking of fallacies, isn't that one called "correlation does not imply causation"?
