On Friday, March 28, 2014 3:44:09 AM UTC+5:30, Mark H. Harris wrote: > On 3/27/14 4:42 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: > > And this is the bit where, I think, we disagree. I think that > > programming is for programmers, in the same way that music is for > > musicians and the giving of legal advice is for lawyers. Yes, there > > are armchair lawyers, and plenty of people can pick up a hymn book and > > sing;
As for programming its just too much in-our-face (to most of us reading this at least) to discuss it from the pov of 'the* layman' for the same reason that if I try to show you something and stick it ½ inch from your nose, you wont be able to see it. Your other examples fire quite differently than you (perhaps) realize As for laws, I am reminded of the Tao te Ching: Therefore the Master says: I let go of the law, and people become honest. I let go of economics, and people become prosperous. I let go of religion, and people become serene. I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass. http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html#57 As for music I find (as Mark does) that technology allows for a 10-fold leap in learning: When I learnt the piano, 10 years to perform anything reasonably and 10 months to make head-or-tail of staff notation were fair estimates. Today, spend 10 days browsing your favourite genre at http://musescore.com/ with a little guidance and staff notation stops being difficult. A couple of weeks more and one and start entering music into the computer (or phone) > ------------------------------------ > > but laws and operas aren't designed with them in mind. Why > > should programming languages be designed for the people who don't want > > to learn them? > Actually we agree quite a bit on this--I agree with everything above the > line----- and some of the sentiment with everything below the line. > Your question has a somewhat false premise. They *really do* want to > learn them, and they are frustrated with the time and attention it > takes. The argument is also from analogy, which in this case is almost > similar but not quite. Well if you see http://cultureandempire.com/cande.html there is this interesting insight: > Moore’s Law isn’t a mythical beast that magically materialized in 1965 > and threatens to unpredictably vanish at any moment. In fact, it’s > part of a broader ancient mechanism that has no intention of > stopping. This mechanism, which I call cost gravity, pulls down the > price of technology by about half every two years. Add to that the fact that cost=money ultimately comes from money=effort eg currencies like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Hours (maybe even dolour → dollar though thats not the official etymology) and its clear that there is a ripple effect of technology breaking down old castles. Pleasant to the* layman, unpleasant to those professionals whose fiefdoms are threatened. > A car's engine usually isn't tuned for 10km/h running; you have to get > up a bit of speed before it becomes more efficient. Why is it so wrong > for Python to expect the same? Lets (temporarily) invert your example: 100 years ago, cobbled streets and horse-carriages were not meant for 100 kmph speeds. Today's roads are. Likewise technology: Like the natural speed of roads has changed, the natural accessibility of technology has also. A big part of python's success was that 20 years ago it worked out way more accessible than C. This peaked around 10 years ago. Nowadays I am not so sure what its direction is... ------------ * And I'll leave it to Steven to cudgel the 'the' <wink> -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
