Crockford on JavaScript - Section 8: Programming Style & Your Brain

Wow, that's impressive! My streak is a mere 416 days so far: [LINK] I think the most important thing is that you must want to do it. Without an innate desire, it would require inhuman willpower to maintain such a streak. That said, it does get easier over time. Once you get into the habit of doing at least a little work every day, the streak comes pretty naturally. I say "want" and not "like" because wanting and liking are not the same thing. I usually find myself frustrated and annoyed by code, but for some reason I keep coming back. I think most programmers are weird in that respect. As Douglas Crockford says: I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. A normal person, once they’ve looked into the abyss, will say, “I’m done. This is stupid. I’m going to do something else.” But not us, ‘cause there’s something really wrong with us. [1] 1. [VIDEO]

> A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. It might not be bad in itself and if you do it right it can be as good or better than a presentation without the material that is read aloud. But at the same time you are wasting the potential of a presentation that is solely meant to help the attendee/listener along and to drive home the important points or even to just use it as a rhetoric device . As an extreme example, look at this presentation: [VIDEO] [1]. Most of the time his slides do not even contain a summary of what he talks about but just the headline or the punchline. And I find his style very refreshing. If you really want to have stuff that you want your listeners to be able to work through at home, something which contains all important aspects, then just publish lecture notes online.[2] [1] He begins his talk with some more conversational stuff but later on (skip to 18:30) he also features more technical stuff, and there his presentation is more interesting for our discussion. [2] I see myself making this point the third time in the discussion of the article and I'm somewhat surprised that it's not completely obvious.

I think the exact opposite is true: Programming is more scientific than most science. A biologist often spends months experimenting before invalidating a hypothesis. A programmer's hypotheses are proven wrong dozens of times a day. By failing so quickly and often, we build mental models of code that closely correspond to reality.[1] Also, our experimental apparati are more powerful than anything in the analog world. We have debuggers that can stop time and examine every aspect of a running process. No other field gets such tools. In fact, I'm not sure I'd feel safe if other fields had debuggers. The chemistry-equivalent of a debugger is molecular nanotech. The physics-equivalent is omnipotence. 1. A side note: I have a hunch that this perpetual feedback loop of failure messes with our heads. There's a certain je ne sais quois about many who write code. It's not just programmers who notice it. A few months ago, I overheard two finance people talking about me. One said, "Geoff's kind of a weird guy, don't you think?" To which the other replied, "You haven't met many programmers, have you?" Douglas Crockford seems to agree. From [VIDEO] : I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. A normal person, once they’ve looked into the abyss, will say, “I’m done. This is stupid. I’m going to do something else.” But not us, ‘cause there’s something really wrong with us.

> But when does this grief stop? It doesn't, but we get used to it. I take the same view as Douglas Crockford: I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. A normal person, once they’ve looked into the abyss, will say, “I’m done. This is stupid. I’m going to do something else.” But not us, ‘cause there’s something really wrong with us. [1] I'm pretty sure this "brokenness" can be trained, but tossing someone in the deep end is not the way to do it. 1. From Programming Style & Your Brain: [VIDEO]

Douglas Crockford has a great talk that touches on the head-gut connection and how it relates to programming. "We could not program without our gut. I have absolutely no evidence to justify that statement. But my gut tells me it's true, so I believe it." [VIDEO]

Douglas Crockford touches on this aspect in this entertaining and insightful talk [0]. I'm guilty of what you state and I think a large part of "programming" is rudimentary boiler plate coding/configuration and staring into the Abyss. I think our role will be to design algorithms and come up with creative solutions/hacks (which would be difficult for a program) and designing a workflow/flow chart and feeding it into a program which spits out binaries and flag for edge cases. A whole swat industries and economies (read outsourcing) will become redundant and only outsourcing done would be to the generator. [0]: [VIDEO]