What I learned by reading Businessweek's incredible 38,000-word article on code

Business Insider ^ | 06/14/2015 | MATT ROSOFF

[Kid Shelleen]

Bloomberg Businessweek has devoted an entire issue to a single article: Paul Ford's "What is Code?"

I read the whole thing online this afternoon, and it's remarkable. I could see it being taught in journalism classes years from now, like Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" or John Hersey's "Hiroshima." It takes something both very important and hard to understand, and makes it understandable to an audience of smart but nonexpert readers. It does this incredibly well. It mostly feels like fun, not work.

[C210N]

Why you speak with a lisp? You trying to snoball me? It’s enough to give me mumps.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Should’ve read: There’s ‘C’ ... used mostly by real programmers who know how to properly allocate and use system, hardware, & network resources to write fast, efficient instructions.

Flame away, Code Monkeys. ;p

[ComputerGuy]

Just gimme that ole Watcom C compiler.

[cynwoody]

Got this far: “There’s C ... used today mostly to build programs that run on devices like printers”

If your printer were to print out the source code for its firmware, what do you suppose it would look like?

How about the code running in your microwave or your internet-connected thermostat?

[Excellence]

I wouldn’t mind learning how to create apps for windows phones.

[jamaksin]

Or Jean Sammet’s “Tower of Babel” circa 1969 - Bliss, SNOBOL,L6, Autocoder, PL/1, ..., etc.

[cynwoody]

Should’ve read: There’s ‘C’ ... used mostly by real programmers who know how to properly allocate and use system, hardware, & network resources to write fast, efficient instructions.

[Bob]

While I haven’t written code for printers, I did write a lot of it for controlling test equipment. It’s not a bad language at all for embedded systems.

[JohnnyP]

I have a slew of “How to learn C” books and links to tutorials.

I’m just a hardware guy, and assembly is easier for me. Learned it on my own on a 6502, then HC11, now 9S12.

Now doing a project using 9S08. Arg. Only one 8 bit accumulator and I don’t know those tricky stack manipulation instructions.

C looks sacry. It’s voids and ALL_CAPS and underscores. Just can’t get into it.

[Kid Shelleen]

>> What programing language should an engineer/scientist learn today? <<<
I think C++ will give you a good foundation for computer science and engineering but it is a difficult language to master. If you learn C++ you will also be a pretty good C programmer.
After C++ you could probably pickup JAVA and Python more easily.
I think a lot of college students and high school students are starting with JAVA because it easier to learn object oriented concepts without the complexity of the C++ syntax.

[krunkygirl]

I know nothing (don’t try to educate me...) but would a serious gamer learn from/be interested in this article?!

[Fightin Whitey]

learn from/be interested in this article

I must say that over the long run finely tuned fly-fishing skills would be much more useful and beneficial.

I know a great guide.

[Tzfat]

If you are going deep, go assembly.

[Bob]

Sure, for critical stuff.

[libertarian27]

bookmark

[norwaypinesavage]

I learned Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) in the mid sixties. I thought my instructor was an arrogant bastard who only answered questions with the minimum information to get rid of you. I later learned that all good coders were that way. It's not that they were arrogant, it's that they had memorized so many irrelevant details that they couldn't possibly describe all of them in a short time in such a way that you would known them all. I actually learned Fortran well enough that three decades later, while taking my PE exam, I remembered that 1H1 was a 'Hollerith Literal' that advanced the line printer to the top of the next page. For those who don't know what a Line Printer is: go to end.

I learned, and in my opinion, excelled in DTSS BASIC. It was very inefficient, but used many real English words, and could almost be read like a book. It went out of style with MSDOS. BTW, the first IBM PCs would defer to a hardware BASIC interpreter if no floppies were installed upon boot. For those of you who don't know what 'boot' and 'floppies' mean: go to end.

I have learned nothing about programming since. Good programming requires memorizing of hundreds, if not thousands of meaningless phrases, without which you're helpless. I wish I could, but I can't (or won't).

[reed13k]

bfl

[palmer]

C++ would be good to learn from C, then move to Java but it might not be a good way to get stuff done. It will depend on the types of things you want to do. If it requires some ready-made libraries to get stuff done easily (e.g. text processing, image processing, web crawling, number crunching without spreadsheets), then skip right to Java or Python.

Put another way, Python is a better language to code a little, test a little, end up with a bit of a mess. C++ is better for learning to be a nice clean coder, because if you don't it will bite you hard. Java is in between. Often the errors in your Python will be incredibly obvious, rejected by the compiler in Java, and result in a mystery crash in C++.

[palmer]

At the end of the section on frameworks the author says: “Take the work that’s been done for you. DRY (don’t repeat yourself).” The first might be true, a 20,000,000 line framework has already done lots of work. But it forces you to repeat yourself, the opposite of DRY. Basically with a framework, it is in charge and you are a grunt, repeating little bits of boilerplate over and over. Even worse, there are lots of frameworks, especially on top of Java, that force you to repeat yourself in XML. Sure the boilerplate code or XML config file might be simple, but it is repetitive and often just stupid for large projects. The “solution”” is often auto-generated XML and/or code or even frameworks on top of frameworks.

[ecomcon]

lol, me too.