[spam][draft] Why Write Code?

[Karl Semich]

>> everybody is using reactjs
>
> This is what I mean.  They're not even using an actual language.
> They're assembling parts.

Right; I think we're on the same page here. As technology is
developing, people look like they're being taught that software
development is limited to a provided featureset.

> "The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of
> complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations.
> Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to
> approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by
> rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up
> finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want. How it
> does it is not interesting! The result is a student who knows how to put
> a simple program together, but does not know how to program."

It's cool to hear a c-like systems programming viewpoint coming
through. Been a while.

I'm in both camps here, and my personal opinion is that that's
inherent and important: high level and low level together. One needs
to understand either one of them well to make effective decisions with
the other. I personally feel like I've explored other people's java
source code to accomplish a task as much as source code in any other
language (android being the primary example), but I know that's not
the culture of java.

I kind of see how the culture of programming at a higher and higher
level lends itself toward people being more and more disconnected from
the capabilities and workings of the systems in use. I imagine how our
systems change languages at different levels doesn't make exploratory
inspection easy, either, nor the closedness of much mainstream source
code.

People will keep trying to look, though :) I remember making repair
parts out of found objects before I had even visited a hardware store.
They didn't work well, but I developed some mechanical engineering
intuition.