Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language
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@admiral_p I didn’t say any of that. I mentioned him as a counter-example to your claim that without any musical theory, you’ll be limited to a few specific, not-very-good styles of music.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Note how people have done exactly that for every programming language but have never succeeded in doing that for any natural language.
And it didn't succeed for programming languages either because they keep creating new languages instead of polishing the existing ones which was the original topic of this thread.
C# is quite polished.
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@Gurth I just react impulsively when people talk about Jimi Hendrix as a testament that you don't need to know music theory to be a great musician. He picked it up on the road and he wouldn't probably be able to tell you how and why he did stuff, but he knew what he was doing, so much that he could play other people's music in a band, and also reinterpret it his own way (eg. Hey Joe, All Along The Watchtower, both better than the original versions by the way). He would have been able to tell Noel Redding to carry the song with a blues line in minor B flat, and tell Mitch Mitchell to carry the eights on the high-hat. He was no Beethoven by any means, but he knew his way around scales and stuff. By the way, I can tell your that the great majority of musicians in the charts can't read music either. It's not really required in pop and rock music.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Does singing, clapping, and blowing horns count as playing music?
Does it not? Too low for your taste?
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@Gurth
I don't think that style is on the approved musical list ...Maybe Jazz is?
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@admiral_p said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gurth I just react impulsively when people talk about Jimi Hendrix as a testament that you don't need to know music theory to be a great musician. He picked it up on the road and he wouldn't probably be able to tell you how and why he did stuff, but he knew what he was doing, so much that he could play other people's music in a band, and also reinterpret it his own way (eg. Hey Joe, All Along The Watchtower, both better than the original versions by the way). He would have been able to tell Noel Redding to carry the song with a blues line in minor B flat, and tell Mitch Mitchell to carry the eights on the high-hat. He was no Beethoven by any means, but he knew his way around scales and stuff. By the way, I can tell your that the great majority of musicians in the charts can't read music either. It's not really required in pop and rock music.
So to summarize: He was a great musician, and didn't know music theory
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@hungrier said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
He was a great musician, and didn't know music theory
Which supports my premise: theory doesn't make you great, but it does make it easier (for people who have the capacity to generalize) to become really good quickly.
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@hungrier he didn't study it. But most people pick up the basics of it and know what they're doing (but can't explain it). They won't know harmony or play anything which is not Western music but as long as they have critical listening they will be able to extrapolate the concepts. So it's not formal. Fine, not a big deal. In rock music and pop music it isn't (most rock and pop music revolve around a limited number of scales and chords and rhythms). Plus art is taste and if you believe in postmodernism, there are no rules in art. Programming is not taste. Many programmers have no formal knowledge of the innards of what they do. They just code. What's your opinion of their work?
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@admiral_p Some of them (the Jimi Hendrix of programming, lets say) may intuitively figure out what works well, but most don't.
I don't even recall what the original point was or how the discussion started. I just thought it was funny that you started your paragraph with "don't hold up Jimi Hendrix as some musical genius who succeeded despite not knowing music theory" and then laid out why he was a musical genius who succeeded despite not knowing music theory.
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@hungrier I didn't say that. I said that he's a very bad example as he's so unique. He's a terrible example. You don't know how many hacks will use Jimi Hendrix as an example for not putting any effort and doing the same lazy licks over and over, provided they're playing in tune with the song.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Should have said "except drums". Does singing, clapping, and blowing horns count as playing music?
Huh... yeah? Why wouldn't it?
And if you think non-Western music is limited to voice, drums and horns... you have a lot to learn. All kinds of musical instruments exist or have existed in other cultures.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
If you're literally drawing a piece of graphics that's a map - yes. If you're only describing the relative positions of various objects (or group of objects with opaque internal structure) within your game world - not at all.
Why would you bother to describe something you won't use?
Who said I won't? You don't need to physically draw a map for a game to be able to navigate the player around it.
Ah, the classic "you aren't allowed to voice your opinions on movies if you haven't directed one yourself" argument.
Sure you can voice your opinion if you find a victim to listen to it, but if what you say is "Hey, I would like to watch movies if they were good, but they aren't" without offering any proof that there are no good movies
Ah, the classic "bring me a conclusive proof that pink dragons don't exist and then we'll talk" argument.
and especially if you have not made any movies and have no clue about fine arts, then you shouldn't cry when someone pisses on your opinion.
What languages have you created?
So Inform7 is a real deal but Datalog is just a toy? Interesting.
Hey, don't cry now, you started it.
Started what? Dismissing decades of achievements in computer science theory and millions of workhours by top class AI engineers around the world as just a toy?
The interpreter is an integral part of the language.
Except in this case it isn't. Inform7 is editor and compiler which outputs a file in a Z-machine binary format which can be played by numerous interpreters. Z-machine format predates Inform7 by quite a few years.
Okay, sorry, I wasn't aware that Inform7 is just a frontend and not a back-to-back software solution. But it doesn't invalidate my argument. At the moment, Inform7 the language can only be used with Inform7 the compiler. At the moment, Inform7 the compiler can only target Z-machine format. At the moment, code in Z-machine format can only be used in text adventure game engines. Therefore, at the moment, Inform7 the language cannot be used for anything other than text adventure games, and there's no evidence it could be ever adapted to any other task - at the moment, it's only wishful thinking. Just like running C++ in browser client-side was just wishful thinking before Emscripten. And it wasn't an insult in 2002 to C++ designers to point out that it couldn't be used in browser - and neither it's an insult now to point out Inform7 cannot be used for anything other than text adventures.
Funny thing - this forum is the only place where I have any trouble expressing myself clearly. Also - don't you think you're making some very far fetching assumptions about people you've never met?
Assumptions seem to be mutual.
So now you're assuming my assumptions?
Because it would make for a very awkward sentence.
As opposed to already awkward sentence not defining the galaxy by its name, but instead referencing it by one tiny object it contains in the middle of nowhere?
Fuck you, I won't make the same correction twice. You're factually wrong about what that sentence was referencing the galaxy by.
How would someone from Andromeda galaxy understand that sentence?
Probably the same as the rest of us, that to go from Sol to Alpha Centauri, you have to move toward the center of the galaxy.
You're a world class extrapolator. Thinking that random facts about universe are more common than they actually are means that I shit all over my assigned task at work!
Did you ever write end-user documentation?
Yes.
If you leave out details you assume they know it will be shit.
I don't leave out details in end-user documentation I write. I don't know where you've got that idea from.
FAQ doesn't contain the word "combat". "Some pretty complex games written in it which have combat and turns" is so vague that it's not even possible to tell whether it answers my question, and it makes it sound like you don't even know yourself what Inform7 is capable of and just make up bullshit on the spot in hopes I give up questioning you before you have to admit that the emperor has no clothes.
Relevant part of FAQ as a screenshot for people who don't know what they were looking for, but want to argue something is useless anyway:
The first two sections are about text adventures. The third section pretty much says that Inform7 isn't just unhelpful, but outright hindrance when making GUI stuff. The last section says that at the moment there is no way not to use the default UI for Inform7 programs, and as far as I can tell, default UI only supports text adventures. It's very much in line with what I'm saying - that at the moment you can't use Inform7 for anything that's not a text adventure.
I'm gonna dig into the source of those multiplayer extensions later. Just to see how much effort it takes to write multiplayer module in Inform7. I bet five dollars that over 90% of the extensions source code isn't in Inform7.
You are literally saying someone's opinion is more valid because they have more achievements.
What I am saying is that their achievements are known and measurable so I trust what I see with my own eyes and what I can use for free rather than your opinion of their work which you formed after spending 2 minutes casually checking it out already laden with negative bias. Same goes for Benjamin BJ Hall.
It's one thing not to trust our judgement. It's another to say we're definitely wrong.
And just so we are clear. Inform seems to be a very popular language for text adventure makers. And it seems it handles rather complex expressions, as well as allows great flexibility in description of world objects. I'm sure that whoever made it, is an excellent developer as well as computer scientist who understands programming language theory very well. Inform7 is an amazing tool for what it was made for. All I'm saying is that it's useless for anything outside its niche.
Now that is a much more fair way of saying it. If you said it like that the first time I wouldn't argue but your (and Ben's) outright dismissive and insulting tone towards something you have no experience with really pissed me off.
All I did is add some sugary talk that was entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, praising people I don't know for things I haven't heard of. The rest was word for word identical with my initial post, except I replaced "text adventures" with "its niche". My takeaway is that you care way more about ass-kissing rituals than actual merit of arguments and you refuse to consider anything that isn't sufficiently wrapped in hollow praise.
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
...you realize it's a year, not a revision number?
Of course I do. Would you prefer me to say C++ version (99, 03, 11, 14, 17...) 6.0?
I was just checking. You made it sound like you think there are seventeen revisions of C++ standard.
You keep spewing ignorant bs like this all the time.
To paraphrase @Gąska -- Ah the classic case of "The pot calling the kettle black".
I like how you called yourself ignorant here.
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Luhmann you don't even have to reach to other civilizations. Just look at guitarists. Notes? Keys? What art thou speakest of? Got my tabs, 's all I need.
And all those who can only play by tabs can't figure out anything on their own
Yes, you need to think up your own music eventually to progress above certain level. But even at this stage, you don't need notes for anything. You can just write your own tabs.
Or you know, you could listen to guitarists who really know their shit like say John Gomm:
Which still doesn't require notes.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Note how people have done exactly that for every programming language but have never succeeded in doing that for any natural language.
And it didn't succeed for programming languages either because they keep creating new languages instead of polishing the existing ones which was the original topic of this thread.
You're just reinforcing my argument. The art of programming is organic. There is no specification of everything allowed and there is no authoritative regulatory body. Anyone is free to create their own set of rules, and they can be anything they want. And people are creating their own rules, and they are very diverse. But within a single programming language, which is an artificial creation, there is an authoritative body, and often there is specification as well. The rules are set in stone (unless the regulatory body decides to change them, but no one else can change them). The rules are strict and constant in time, and violating them leaves you unable to execute your code. Compare to natural languages.
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@admiral_p said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gurth I just react impulsively when people talk about Jimi Hendrix as a testament that you don't need to know music theory to be a great musician. He picked it up on the road and he wouldn't probably be able to tell you how and why he did stuff, but he knew what he was doing, so much that he could play other people's music in a band, and also reinterpret it his own way (eg. Hey Joe, All Along The Watchtower, both better than the original versions by the way).
In IT world, people like this are considered to be lacking in theoretical knowledge. They know their stuff, they can write very good code, they can recognize and avoid various pitfalls - but they usually have much trouble handling more abstract topics, ones that don't show up in regular coding. These people are usually much slower to adapt to new technologies and new ways of doing things. Blakey is a good example - he's definitely a good developer with lots of experience, but look up any thread about functional programming and you'll see he just can't wrap his head about any of this - because he never got CS degree.
I don't know anything about Jimi Hendrix, but from your description, it sounds like he really didn't need theory (as in structured raw facts) to become a great musician.
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@Gąska the bottom line is that you have to learn the stuff from somewhere. Some people can pick it up on their own without having it effectively spoon fed like one does in a classroom environment. And of course not all classroom environments are equal.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
But within a single programming language, which is an artificial creation, there is an authoritative body, and often there is specification as well.
Though the nature of a programming language can change a lot over time too. Compare the original C++ with the latest spec. Are they the same thing?
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@boomzilla said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
the bottom line is that you have to learn the stuff from somewhere. Some people can pick it up on their own without having it effectively spoon fed like one does in a classroom environment.
But there's just so much to learn about any subject worthy of one's time that it's hard to learn it all by yourself. Good teaching/training directs the learner's attention in particularly fruitful directions so as to cover as much of the space as possible without hitting all the details.
Knowing the map lets you be efficient about crossing the territory, yet that doesn't mean that the map is the territory! And someone has to survey the territory first to make the map…
And of course not all classroom environments are equal.
Extremely true.
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@dkf said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@boomzilla said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
the bottom line is that you have to learn the stuff from somewhere. Some people can pick it up on their own without having it effectively spoon fed like one does in a classroom environment.
But there's just so much to learn about any subject worthy of one's time that it's hard to learn it all by yourself. Good teaching/training directs the learner's attention in particularly fruitful directions so as to cover as much of the space as possible without hitting all the details.
Knowing the map lets you be efficient about crossing the territory, yet that doesn't mean that the map is the territory! And someone has to survey the territory first to make the map…
Yeah, but you also spend a lot of time learning stuff that's not so worthy. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it definitely offsets some of the other efficiency.
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@boomzilla said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Yeah, but you also spend a lot of time learning stuff that's not so worthy.
The problem is working out what is worthy ahead of time is harder than it sounds.
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@Gąska rock music (especially that brand of rock music) revels in imperfection. That only really works in art (more specifically in pop art). Velvet Underground for example was quintessentially pop art (they were produced by Warhol after all). (Even though one of the band members was classically trained I think). But this doesn't generally work that much in a regular professional setting. Well actually it depends. But while in art imperfection is or can be an added value, generally speaking imperfection is at most neutral.
Not that you necessarily need formal education to be an effective worker. My bandmate has never finished school, let alone go to university, and he's an accomplished frontend and backend developer who has been involved in some high-profile projects (such as the website for a big clothes chain here).
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
IMO, the way people use language to express their ideas is what changes, and our interpretation of their expression has to change with it if we accept it (which we shouldn't but that's another story). That doesn't mean the language itself has changed because the old stuff is still there and on most occasions during the day you do follow language rules.
It sounds like you're saying that because Shakespeare's works (the old stuff) — BTW, happy birthday, Will — still exist, English hasn't changed, and we should (and you do) still follow the same grammar and spelling rules he used.
But wait a minute, he was wrong to have accepted the language changes since the "old stuff" of his day, like Chaucer.
But we can't accept Chaucerian English, because the English of the pre-Norman Britons is the real "old stuff." Except that it isn't, because it's a corruption of the old Germanic dialects of the Angles and Saxons. And so on.
Few, if any, of those changes were intentional. People migrated and incorporated bits of the language of their new territory. They invaded and conquered neighbors and absorbed some of their languages, or were invaded and absorbed the language of their conquerors; Norman French had a huge influence on English. They traded and needed words for goods from other places, so they borrowed (and corrupted) words from the languages of the places the merchandise came from. They discovered and invented things, and they invented words to describe them. And, yes, they were lazy and dropped inflections where they weren't necessary for clear understanding.
With the possible exception of inventing or borrowing words for things that previously didn't have words, none of these were intentional attempts to change the language, per se. They were attempts to communicate with a neighbor who spoke a different language, or to make oneself more socially acceptable (in the case of adopting a conqueror's language), or simple ignorance. But the usage spread from person to person and eventually became accepted. Or it didn't, and died out.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Kids just won't sit on their rumps all day doing nothing.
Unless their rumps are sitting in front of video screens.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Note how people have done exactly that [agreed on using one language and having a standard] for every programming language
Sometimes they even have 14 standards.
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@HardwareGeek said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Kids just won't sit on their rumps all day doing nothing.
Unless their rumps are sitting in front of video screens.
Your
is showing.
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@dkf said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
But within a single programming language, which is an artificial creation, there is an authoritative body, and often there is specification as well.
Though the nature of a programming language can change a lot over time too. Compare the original C++ with the latest spec. Are they the same thing?
The only significant changes in C++ semantics since 1998 were thread-safe static variable initialization and move semantics. Everything else was syntactic sugar and bigger standard library. C++20 might or might not introduce coroutines, and that will be 3rd change in two decades.
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@HardwareGeek grammar doesn't change that much anymore because of more widespread education and the press (which has now a broader audience, which has led it to standardise more). Now it's more vocabulary choice and language register (lower language registers are now more acceptable even in "serious" press). Some words sound fresher now. And sometimes, especially in America, even the press incorporates subcultures (eg. black culture) somewhat. But I don't see language per se changing as much as it did in the past.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
The only significant changes in C++ semantics since 1998
I was thinking of the original version, from 1985…
C++20 might or might not introduce coroutines, and that will be 3rd change in two decades.
Everything you can do with coroutines, you can do with other mechanisms. (It's just sometimes really painful to actually do so.)
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@dkf said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@boomzilla said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
the bottom line is that you have to learn the stuff from somewhere. Some people can pick it up on their own without having it effectively spoon fed like one does in a classroom environment.
But there's just so much to learn about any subject worthy of one's time that it's hard to learn it all by yourself. Good teaching/training directs the learner's attention in particularly fruitful directions so as to cover as much of the space as possible without hitting all the details.
There's also that if you only learn by doing, you'll be reinventing the wheel all the time. Theoretical knowledge is nice to have because someone has already done the hard part.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@HardwareGeek said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Kids just won't sit on their rumps all day doing nothing.
Unless their rumps are sitting in front of video screens.
Your
is showing.I've never tried to hide it.
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The question for me is not theory XOR application. It's which comes first when you're learning it.
I find that simply teaching theory doesn't hold the attention of any but the most dedicated student. Not only that, there are a lot of things that are true in theory, but not in practice. On the flip side, it's hard to generalize from application, and as @Gąska said you'll reinvent the wheel a lot.
When it comes to programming, being able to use a REPL-style interpreter to get immediate feedback without the overhead of a full compiled program is real nifty and keeps people engaged pretty well. Kids seeing that what they do makes things happen has to happen quickly, otherwise they totally zone out. You can sprinkle theory in along the way, but "thinking like a programmer" doesn't happen without being able to write real programs that do things they care about.
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By the way, if you read 19th Century English, it's very much understandable. It's not much different to ours. Compare that with Italian. One of those "mandatory reads" in high school is The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. It requires much more effort than contemporary (to it) efforts in English prose. Even early 20th Century Italian is quite different (in spelling too, for example the verb "aiutare" - to help - was spelled with a j, "aiutare", as the j sound is similar to the y sound in English and it's technically more precise, considering that in Italian consonants have more or less one way of being pronounced, barring few exceptions). I don't see much difference in English (prose, that is). Nevertheless, if you read 1950s prose both in English and Italian it is basically the same as today, 70 years later.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
In IT world, people like this are considered to be lacking in theoretical knowledge. They know their stuff, they can write very good code, they can recognize and avoid various pitfalls - but they usually have much trouble handling more abstract topics, ones that don't show up in regular coding. These people are usually much slower to adapt to new technologies and new ways of doing things.
I don't disagree, but weren't you saying recently that it's OK not to understand or care about how things work internally?
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Blakey is a good example - he's definitely a good developer with lots of experience, but look up any thread about functional programming and you'll see he just can't wrap his head about any of this - because he never got CS degree.
I don't think it's related to education. He can't wrap his head around CLIs, Git, and plenty of other things that most developers (even self-taught ones) have no problems with, either. And he has disdain for people who actually know CS.
On the other hand, one of my friend is entirely self-taught (his education was completely unrelated to computing and mathematics), but he understands programming concepts better than a significant proportion of professional developers I've met.
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@Zerosquare Yeah. Formal education != education. Especially in CS, where lots of what's taught in CS programs (according to friends who have gone through those programs) is aimed at creating new professors rather than actual programmers, whose job is quite different.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
what's taught in CS programs (according to friends who have gone through those programs) is aimed at creating new professors rather than actual programmers
It's a widespread problem in academia. CS isn't the worst on that aspect ; there are disciplines for which there is basically no demand outside of universities.
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@Zerosquare said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
what's taught in CS programs (according to friends who have gone through those programs) is aimed at creating new professors rather than actual programmers
It's a widespread problem in academia. CS isn't the worst on that aspect ; there are disciplines for which there is basically no demand outside of universities.
Oh I'm plenty aware of that. Don't even get me started on academia in general...
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@Zerosquare said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
In IT world, people like this are considered to be lacking in theoretical knowledge. They know their stuff, they can write very good code, they can recognize and avoid various pitfalls - but they usually have much trouble handling more abstract topics, ones that don't show up in regular coding. These people are usually much slower to adapt to new technologies and new ways of doing things.
I don't disagree, but weren't you saying recently that it's OK not to understand or care about how things work internally?
I'm not talking about internals - I'm talking about the abstract data structures and other mathematical instruments, their properties and related algorithms. It's not about looking under the hood - it's about knowing the common implementation patterns in your field so you can quickly implement them and know when to choose a particular one. At high level. Reducing any task at hand into one of the classic graph traversal problems (when applicable) is a very useful skill, because instead of spending time thinking up an algorithm, you can use ready-made solution by someone far better at this than you'll ever be, even if it's completely different subject than the original implementation.
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Blakey is a good example - he's definitely a good developer with lots of experience, but look up any thread about functional programming and you'll see he just can't wrap his head about any of this - because he never got CS degree.
I don't think it's related to education. He can't wrap his head around CLIs, Git, and plenty of other things that most developers (even self-taught ones) have no problems with, either.
It's not that he can't understand them. He just hates them. And for a good reason. CLI and Git really are awful.
And he has disdain for people who actually know CS.
Yes, that's another of his problems, and I suspect it's directly related to not knowing CS himself.
On the other hand, one of my friend is entirely self-taught (his education was completely unrelated to computing and mathematics), but he understands programming concepts better than a significant proportion of professional developers I've met.
I'm also mostly self-taught. But it really helped me when I started learning what the academia has to say about programming. You don't have to go to university to learn this, you can find everything online - although it helps when there's someone who can point you in the right direction; even if you won't learn anything useful directly, at least it lets you know what there is to learn. It also allows you to learn what are the official names for the clever tricks you've invented in the past - because you're almost never the first person to come up with it.
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@Benjamin-Hall why the disdain for academia? Academia has a precise role. Which is not that of being directly useful. If you do stuff that is directly useful, you're working for a company/government project/mission solving a real problem. No, academia almost has to be abstract because the idea is that what is researched in academia should be applicable to a wide range of fields, after being shaped and molded into an ad hoc solution. And that's stuff that not always can be done in the R&D department of a company (which is almost invariably a major company). Academia is not about solutions. It's usually about ideas.
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@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
I'm not talking about internals - I'm talking about the abstract data structures and other mathematical instruments, their properties and related algorithms. It's not about looking under the hood - it's about knowing the common implementation patterns in your field so you can quickly implement them and know when to choose a particular one. At high level. Reducing any task at hand into one of the classic graph traversal problems (when applicable) is a very useful skill, because instead of spending time thinking up an algorithm, you can use ready-made solution by someone far better at this than you'll ever be, even if it's completely different subject than the original implementation.
Agreed, but I guess different people draw the dividing line in different places. Some claim you no longer need to know what the underlying data structure for a dictionary should be, for example, because modern languages handle that for you. (I don't agree, BTW.)
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
I'm also mostly self-taught. But it really helped me when I started learning what the academia has to say about programming. You don't have to go to university to learn this, you can find everything online - although it helps when there's someone who can point you in the right direction; even if you won't learn anything useful directly, at least it lets you know what there is to learn. It also allows you to learn what are the official names for the clever tricks you've invented in the past - because you're almost never the first person to come up with it.
Definitely. What I meant is that the mindset you have, and the effort you put into learning this, are much more important factors than whether or not you have a CS degree. I studied electrical engineering for five years, and yet the majority of skills I use in my job have been more-or-less self-taught (either by reading books or working on personal and professional projects).
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@admiral_p said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Benjamin-Hall why the disdain for academia? Academia has a precise role. Which is not that of being directly useful. If you do stuff that is directly useful, you're working for a company/government project/mission solving a real problem. No, academia almost has to be abstract because the idea is that what is researched in academia should be applicable to a wide range of fields, after being shaped and molded into an ad hoc solution. And that's stuff that not always can be done in the R&D department of a company (which is almost invariably a major company). Academia is not about solutions. It's usually about ideas.
That would be fine if academia was only training future professors, fundamental researchers, etc.
But it's not the case. Plenty of students go to university to prepare for a job outside academia. Emphasizing theory at the expense of practice is doing them a disservice.
(I don't know how bad it is in other countries, but French academia is well-known for its tendency to consider that theory reigns supreme, and practice is something only lowly people care about.)
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@admiral_p in theory, yes. In (American) practice? No. It's the most corrupt, self serving, screwed up system we have. And that's saying a lot. All the complaints against "big business"? Go double for American higher education and then some. Overpaid management that's disconnected from the day to day? Meet college presidents and admin staff, a cancer that metastasizes daily. Exploitation of workers? Adjuncts and grad students are treated horribly. Perverse incentives? Rife with them. Gouging? Have you seen tuition and books recently? And the list goes on.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
You cannot play music without at least some music theory such as knowing there are notes, pauses, keys, scales, rhythms, which notes and chords go with others, etc.
Yes, you can learn to play by ear without theory
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@Zerosquare the problem is that you, like many others, do not get the point of university. If you want marketable skills, you go to a vocational school and you follow a vocational course. Universities by tradition are supposed to be places where you acquire pure knowledge (actually, not even necessarily knowledge, but depth and coherence of thought). The idea of a university degree is not that you can work in your field of choice. A degree (supposedly) certifies that you have "cracked" your field of choice, full stop, just like being a black belt doesn't mean you're ready to take on hordes of enemies. Professional training is better served by the companies you work for. For the simple reason that professional training is a continuously moving target, while the process behind becoming a university graduate is timeless.
By the way most companies don't really need university graduates.
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@admiral_p There are places that think like that. There are others that are very highly rated as universities that look at that sort of thing and say “well that's a stupid crock of shit and we reject it”. The theory is provided since it is a very suitable way of learning for some, yet in general without a way to turn theory into practice, all you end up with is unsatisfying academic wanking. Combining theory and practice achieves a much more satisfying set of insights into the world, in all fields.
Trade schools are something else. They tend to teach skills that are utterly bound to specific ways of working with no generalization at all. If you want to learn about exactly SharePoint Enterprise of the edition released on a specific date, all taught by people who tell you to do things like clicking the third item on the fourth menu and so on (all of which is stupidly easily changed between versions even by accident) then a trade school is for you. Some people seem to love 'em. (I don't.)
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@Zerosquare said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
I'm not talking about internals - I'm talking about the abstract data structures and other mathematical instruments, their properties and related algorithms. It's not about looking under the hood - it's about knowing the common implementation patterns in your field so you can quickly implement them and know when to choose a particular one. At high level. Reducing any task at hand into one of the classic graph traversal problems (when applicable) is a very useful skill, because instead of spending time thinking up an algorithm, you can use ready-made solution by someone far better at this than you'll ever be, even if it's completely different subject than the original implementation.
Agreed, but I guess different people draw the dividing line in different places. Some claim you no longer need to know what the underlying data structure for a dictionary should be, for example, because modern languages handle that for you.
You don't need to know what is behind the dictionary - but you do need to know what's inside the dictionary. Why you've even created a dictionary in the first place, what you're going to use it for, what objects you put inside it, how you're going to retrieve them and for what purpose - because maybe there's a better way to do whatever you're doing. But you won't know that if you don't know what other ways you have available.
(I don't agree, BTW.)
I'd say it depends. And it depends on one thing, and one thing only: whether the library dictionary is fast enough.
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@dkf I think that in general you don't need a five-year+ course to become a proficient <insert professional>. In fact UK universities (according to some stuff I've read on guides to universities) provide vocational diplomas along with degrees which focus on the practical aspect of the specialty. They tend to last two years. Add in a post-diploma course and that is probably all that is needed to start working proficiently in your field. Or maybe you take a BSc/BA and then you follow a postgraduate course. Many people still think that you have to do the whole lot, BSc, MSc, PhD. You don't really need that to work.
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@admiral_p said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Add in a post-diploma course and that is probably all that is needed to start working proficiently in your field.
Quite a few people start in their fields after just the basic BA/BSc, at least in the UK. (It depends on what course they take, naturally.) Others require deeper study, whether for practical reasons or for historical ones.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Go and tell it to a 3 year old, see how they stare at you.
Please don't expose young children to WTDWTF arguments. They have plenty of time to learn that life is pointless and frustrating later.
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@levicki said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
@Gąska said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
Ah, the classic "bring me a conclusive proof that pink dragons don't exist and then we'll talk" argument.
I don't know about you and the kind of people you associate with, but around here generalizing by saying "Hey I want to use good NLP but there aren't any!" should be backed up by some arguments such as "I tried this one, and that one, and they lack A and B and suck at C" instead of just saying "that's like my opinion man I have a right to say it, stop harrassing me for thinking differently" like some entitled little bitch.
You're right, I haven't programmed in natural-language programming languages. Because I never heard of any, except Inform7 a few days ago (which can only be used for making text adventures, which are of no interest for me - no offence, I just don't feel like making one), and AppleScript which is unavailable to me because I don't own a Mac. But I know many regular programming languages. Some are more verbose, some are more concise - both styles have pros and cons, and I know exactly what those pros and cons are, and it's not hard to extrapolate what they become when taken to the extreme. The extreme of being too concise is Perl and Bash. They have the same problems as Python, except bigger. There aren't many popular verbose languages, but the most verbose one I worked with was TTCN - and it's really verbose. Java looks like subcompact car next to it. The additional verbosity made it a bit easier to read casually by a novice developer, but it didn't actually help with doing actual work.
There is no fundamental difference between natural-language programming languages and regular programming languages. They still have strict grammar rules that split the code into terminal tokens and build up syntax tree from them. There's just more grammar and more tokens. And 99% of what makes Inform7 great for text adventures is in the libraries anyway.
What languages have you created?
I haven't created any, but I am not generalizing that all of them are bad without even trying any.
You haven't created any, yet you think you have enough knowledge to tell whether someone's judgement is good or bad.
Started what?
Why are you playing dumb now? You said Inform7 is the toy first.
Because it is. Because you cannot create anything that's not a toy with it. Because text adventures are toys. I'm sure not even you would try to argue that text adventures are more than just toys.
While Datalog solves real life problems for real businesses, including several Fortune 500 companies, right now.
At the moment, Inform7 the compiler can only target Z-machine format.
And Glulx.
Which is another text adventure game engine.
and there's no evidence it could be ever adapted to any other task - at the moment
Actually there is, it would be a matter of extending Glk API and incoroporating new I/O capabilities into Inform compiler.
No one has shown that Inform7 the language can be used to interact with those new I/O capabilities. Embedded DSL doesn't count.
and neither it's an insult now to point out Inform7 cannot be used for anything other than text adventures.
It is insult to say something someone made which took a lot of effort is a toy without even knowing what the hell you are talking about.
Maybe I was a little too harsh for Inform7. It has a practical use (creating text adventures), so it's not just a toy, one might say. But at the moment, it's only good for creating toys. Because text adventures are toys.
So now you're assuming my assumptions?
There is nothing to assume, I already know everything you will write in advance.
And you say I'm arrogant.
Fuck you, I won't make the same correction twice. You're factually wrong about what that sentence was referencing the galaxy by.
Fuck YOU -- it was referencing it by "of Sol" or we were not reading the same sentence.
The galaxy was "the galaxy". The "of Sol" part was a reference point from which you measure direction of Alpha Centauri. Didn't you get this the first time I told you you've got the associativity wrong?
Probably the same as the rest of us, that to go from Sol to Alpha Centauri, you have to move toward the center of the galaxy.
Which galaxy?
There is only one galaxy between Sol and Alpha Centauri.
What is "Sol"?
And this is a valid question. You didn't ask it earlier.
I don't leave out details in end-user documentation I write. I don't know where you've got that idea from.
Because you sure as fuck are defending the poor wording of that stupid unarticulated sentence and then complaining how Inform couldn't understanding when majority of average people wouldn't either.
Everyone could understand it just fine except you. You're in the minority. And even if you were right (just to reiterate - you're not) - it was a casual conversation on a troll forum. Do you really think my - or anyone else's - behavior in casual conversation on a troll forum is representative of their professional work when writing user documentation?
Go and tell it to a 3 year old, see how they stare at you.
You've just compared a programming language you're trying to sell us as a great tool for general purpose programming, to a 3 year old.
It's one thing not to trust our judgement. It's another to say we're definitely wrong.
All I did is add some sugary talk...
So you are a sociopath and under pressure you start telling people what they want to hear?
Not just under pressure. Whenever it benefits me.
No, you wen't from "it's no good / it's a toy" to "it can parse some pretty complex expressions".
Rube Goldberg machines are pretty complex too.
I was just checking. You made it sound like you think there are seventeen revisions of C++ standard.
I honed my teeth on Z-80 and MC68k assembler, do you seriously believe I don't know how many versions "C with Clasess" had?
If you count "C with classes" as C++, you should count every GCC language extension as separate revision too.
Yes, you need to think up your own music eventually to progress above certain level. But even at this stage, you don't need notes for anything. You can just write your own tabs.
There is a shit-ton of nuance in playing which you can't express with TABs.
Tabs don't exist in vacuum. They're not supposed to be comprehensive.
Which still doesn't require notes.
Are you really that ignorant to think that he could have rearranged whole song for just a guitar without writing down the notes?
I didn't listen to him, I don't know anything about him, I couldn't care less about him. I didn't know that he was rearranging - your post sounded like it was about improvising. Yes, you kinda need notes to read the original song to rearrange it (but only kinda - doing it by ear is an option too), but for improvising it's not really necessary. You'll have difficulty passing your invention to another person, especially without a way to send a recording (which is increasingly rare nowadays, with smartphones in everyone's pocket and all), but composing for yourself is totally doable. So while notes certainly help certain things, they're by no means necessary to create music. Source: that's how my brother's band make their songs. They're just amateurs, but still.
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I asked my colleagues, the band and chorus teachers, what they thought about learning to play without theory. They were in total agreement that formal theory is unnecessary to start learning, and you don't need much to be a competent professional musician if you have a good ear. What you need is enough to be able to sight read music and then lots of practice so you don't have to think about it. If you're thinking about the theory, you're not playing right. And there are whole successful schools of music (the Suzuki method) who don't teach any real theory beyond the names of the notes. You learn by playing simple pieces until you master them, then moving on to more complex pieces. And it works.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Microsoft debuts Bosque – a yet another pointless programming language:
What you need is enough to be able to sight read music
I have more than enough theory to read music, but I still can't play worth a hill of beans.
and then lots of practice so you don't have to think about it.
This. But even this doesn't really work for me like it works for good players. Seeing the note on the page in no way translates into putting my fingers in the right places. I can eventually play a fairly simple piece by practicing that specific piece over and over and over and over and ... until I have that piece ingrained into my muscle memory (and even then I'll make mistakes), but hand me another piece of music, even a much simpler one, and it's back to square one.
If you're thinking about the theory, you're not playing right.
While you're playing, you're thinking about the notes, intonation, tempo, mood, phrasing, musicality. If you're singing, you're thinking about lyrics. If you're part of a section, you're thinking about blending with the rest of the section and the other sections. What you're not thinking about is theory. If you're a rock/pop guitarist playing from a chord sheet, and you see a G7, you think "do
with my fingers," not about what notes make up the G7 chord, the role it plays in the harmonic structure of the piece, why the composer/arranger used a G7 instead of, say a Bdim, at least not consciously. Maybe you're thinking, "be careful; this is the one that changes to F instead of resolving to C like usual," but that's probably about as close to theory as you get while you're actually playing.
Django Reinhardt - Wikipedia
