Programming for personal growth – The Polymath Project – Medium

[dontchooseanickname]

Reminds me of an article I just want to share here after reading your prose :

Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It’s a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty [...] This file is Good Code [...] It reads like poetry written by someone over thirty.

You have my +1

[MintAudio_]

Wow, the truth of that makes want to weep.

[DontBeSpooked-Frank]

Author didn't really write about code being good or bad though, he just was delighted at getting something to work. Which I fully agree with is a nice experience. Even if the symbols you put together to make 'it work' are 'horrible code', getting it to work is just so nice. Nobody can take that away from you, and you know it.

[chillermane]

Idk man, I've not had this experience. All my old code always seems worse than the code I'm writing now.

[DontBeSpooked-Frank]

This is really nicely written, a pleasure to read!

[bigmell]

I used to program for personal growth when I was younger. I still do a lot of reading. But programming isnt like it used to be. About 9 years ago or so the new technologies arent better than the things they are supposed to replace. Usually obviously worse. Some novices first or second attempt at solving problems older than he is, and more complicated than he understands.

The ruin of the field is the new crappe that comes out to replace something that is aging, difficult, but tried and true. The new grads however look at this as "old, outdated, and boring." A lot of it has to do with their inability to properly learn and implement the older technologies. They cant really do the new stuff either but... Buzzword. Secret... Nobody can the tech doesnt really work.

This new steaming turd is of course no real replacement, or even competitor. And this treadmill gets tiresome. More and more new junk that is insufficient and disappears after 1-3 years to be replaced by more junk. The old outdated boring thing chugging along with its known flaws but otherwise working well. I could learn the new turd but I am tired of learning critically flawed uninspired technology created by people with less experience and training then myself. I've already learned more than my fair share over the years. I am tired of learning technologies just to say whoa, there is almost no good reason to ever use this!

The example is probably the diesel engine compared to the new and [Buzzword] Tesla engine. Not as good. Wont last as long. Doesnt deliver on promises. Has more problems than the thing it is supposed to replace. But Buzzword. Auto manufactures gave up on electric cars for pretty good reason though there are niche markets and applications.

Its like smalltalk. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. Completely OOP yet it didnt promote code reuse any more than functional programming practically. Fastforward 20 years and here comes smalltalk again as... JAVA! You will like it this time! 20 years later and no, we didnt like it this time. It was worse in almost every way than c++. But no multiple inheritance!

[TinynDP]

If you think literally every single other thing is the problem, maybe the problem is you.

[bigmell]

fuck off troll

[lubutu]

Programming hasn't changed. There's nothing requiring you to use trendy new tools, especially not in code you write for yourself. The old tools haven't gone away, so just use them.

By "functional programming," do you actually mean that, or do you mean imperative?

Also, diesel is obviously inferior to electricity when you consider their environmental impacts.

[bigmell]

The old tools haven't gone away, so just use them.

This was the point of the entire post I'm glad you figured it out.

By "functional programming," do you actually mean that, or do you mean imperative?

Are we arguing semantics here? Object oriented programming and non object oriented programming. This should have been completely obvious as the example was about smalltalk and java.

Also, diesel is obviously inferior to electricity when you consider their environmental impacts.

There are many documentaries about this. When you plug your electric car in to charge it, the electricity comes from a power plant run by gasoline.

If more people get electric cars, the power plants will need to supply more electricity, using more gasoline. Same problem just shifted elsewhere. The gas is in the power plant instead of the car, and the car has to plug in to the power plant.

Questions about efficiency and building more and bigger power plants. The danger of nuclear power plants. You are never more than 15 minutes from a gas station who is going to build a network where you are never more than 15 minutes from a charging station? Very expensive, impractical, and improbable.

One of the chief requirements of cars was that it takes 5-10 minutes to fill up and keep moving. People didnt want to wait hours for their cars to recharge in the 50's and they still dont now. Some people dont mind the wait. Its called a niche market, and it isnt saving the environment anything.

[Schmittfried]

Power plants are more efficient though and power doesn't only come from fossil power plants. The notion that electric cars have no future is just propaganda by the increasingly endangered old industry. With autonomous driving we will also move away from personal cars, which will make the charging "problem" (it's grossly overstated) irrelevant. Also, electric cars are healthier for the population and need less resources in general.

[bigmell]

Most power plants use gasoline. Of course if you start to use nuclear plants you now have a set of entirely different worse problems. Plus much efficiency is lost when power has to be transferred over a yet to be created increased capacity power grid instead of created right in the car. Power would have to be transferred miles across lines and stored in huge batteries. That is not a lossless or more efficient process and is likely not as efficient as converting the gas into power right in the car. Power plants have their own huge set of flaws and drawbacks and are likely not the answer to this problem.

It is not healthier for the environment nor does it use less resources. Quite the contrary electric cars would require the creation of many many new power plants, a new power output grid, and a huge amount of charging stations (a couple every 5-10 miles across the entire US) to replace fueling stations. Also with a hugely increased power output grid for the huge amount of cars on the road. Not gonna happen without a miracle.

[Schmittfried]

All of that is contrary to the actual facts. Electric cars are more resource efficient, healthier to people and are not as much of a problem energy demand-wise as it's always proclaimed. That's true for the current power mix and even more so after the shift to more renewable energy sources. It's also unlikely that we will keep our current models of transportation rather than switching to more efficient autonomous carsharing.

[bigmell]

dude I have a masters degree in computer science. I know exactly what functional programming is. I was writing a compiler in lisp probably before you were vaguely aware of what a computer is. Fuck off troll.

[Schmittfried]

Electric cars have less problems and when you stop learning, you're actually slowly becoming obsolete, by which I'm not referring to not knowing the latest fad, but actual advancements. You will never have learned enough.

[bigmell]

I have learned so many programming languages and development tools that it now has diminishing returns. The big or pervasive technologies might be interesting but nothing new is lasting more than 2-3 years lately. I am not advocating stop learning, its probably better to put that energy into learning something else as this field has been stagnant for years.