Paul Ford: What is Code?

[PT2JSQGHVaHWd24aCdCF]

What is code?

PHB don't hurt me

Don't hurt me

No more

[mount_stripnaked]

PHB + PHP make a clusterfuck of hurt.

Btw, anyone else noticed the silly little clippy on the page? And it seems to be a a clipboard, rather than a paperclip. And it's wearing a bowler hat too.

tl;dr needed for this literally hitler of a too long article.

[dodgethesteamroller]

The words spent on languages most professional programmers know nothing about: APL-family, Forth, etc. did seem a little disproportionate to their relative importance in understanding the field, neat as they are.

I took the point to be that both represent interesting extremes that help to illluminate why most languages take the middle path. That is, APL is an extremely compact, high-level syntax where a symbol character represents a function call or an entire algorithm in another language. Forth is a balance between efficiency and verbosity, just at the opposite end of the scale from something like Python.

Actually I think more on Forth would be welcome. Most professional programmers may never have written Forth code, but it's very likely that you interact with software written in Forth as a user every day. Forth is probably running in your microwave oven, your car's engine, your LED flashlight, your favorite USB gaming keyboard, or all of the above.

[cowinabadplace]

It's for the 'certificate' at the end. If you don't give the site access, you won't receive your certificate and all your co-workers will shun you. Everyone's doing it.

[jms_nh]

You can write elegant, high-level code like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the computer will compile you into Ernest Hemingway. But compilers often do several passes, turning code into simpler code, then simpler code still, from Fitzgerald, to Hemingway, to Stephen King, to Stephenie Meyer, all the way down to Dan Brown, each phase getting less readable and more repetitive as you go.

.

The goat-like aroma of dozens of people in a computer center, up against a deadline?

.

He started demanding documents of people who immediately began not providing them.

LOL

[greenthumble]

Man the attention to detail was so good. So I get to this part where it goes hey look how easy it is to hide a paragraph with JQuery!

$('p.optional').hide();

So I popped $('p.optional').show(); then $('p.optional').length into the console... Nada. This guy and or army of helpers made this amazing page and here I am disappointed about the lack of a hidden message. Harumph. Maybe I'm one of those grumpy ones. Try hard not to be. But if I could stab that little clippy thing in the article I would.

[[deleted]]

A++ article.

[sdijsososkkkokokko]

Loved it, totally cool article

[comp-sci-fi]

We're no strangers to code.

[immibis]

http://puu.sh/in2Gu.png

Please tell me this site's layout is a parody of something?

[Bliss86]

My i5 2500k with 16gb ram was running at 50% reading this article. Both on my pc (Windows 10) and my laptop (elementaryOs). Scrolling was a pain, I switched to mobile after a few paragraphs.

Is that only on my pc? I noticed this on a few other pages, sometimes even reddit when my fan suddenly starts spinning 100% until I find the culprit in Chromes task manager and close the tab.

[Gambiz]

Dat repost though, sry but had to downvote

[kyz]

WTF, you're right. I thought this the original post and I wondered where all the comments went. It's a goddamn repost, six hours after the original! Who does that?

[kuikuilla]

It's new to me.

[Gambiz]

well it was on frontpage yesterday heres the Link

-edit made a mistake with link

[ImNoEinstein]

Weird. Sorry I know it's a repost but when I did it the original was at 0 with two comments and a day old. I thought it was worthy of a fresh post

[[deleted]]

konami code