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On 19/07/2011 10.32, steve donovan wrote:
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Marc Balmer<marc@msys.ch> wrote:Good software is written in the brain, the editor is only needed to finally type in the bright ideas. Only bad programmers need backspace and cursor keys.A lovely vision (it's like the old saying 'strong typing is for programmers with weak memories') But most mortals don't think in code, and in fact mostly don't think in clear prose either. The most polished writing successfully hides the pain of its creation. In both the case of programming and writing the task is to take the non-linear, hyperlinked jumble of ideas and make a coherent narrative out of them.
Yes, definitely. Even Einstein was reportedly a "messy guy", IIRC I read somewhere that its first wife (a, sadly undervalued, mathematician) has deeply contributed to his work by giving to his groundbreaking ideas a cleaner mathematical foundation.
Even great poetry is often not written as "it came to its creator's mind", but assumes its final shape after careful cherry-picking of words, metrics and stylistic artifacts.
Lua flows naturally, is flexible and fits easily in the head. Plus, it has a nice community which isn't too critical and obsessed with the One True Way, which seems to be a semi-religious disease mostly affecting large statically-typed languages.
Definitely! Whenever I see someone advertised as a "<your_language_of_choice_here> evangelist" I start feeling an itch to my right foot, begging me for start kicking ..ses!!! (Was that the reason Oracle gobbled down SUN? Too many Java evangelists and too less rational thinking?).
IMO programming is *science*, *engineering* and *art*. Religion has nothing to do with it. If someone will ever convince me of something regarding programming on a "religious" argument, in that moment I will know I've become a slightly worse programmer.
steve d.
-- Lorenzo