[geeks] Software Bloat

[David Cantrell]

Oops, looks like we have Message Bloat as well :-)

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 05:13:21PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> David Cantrell wrote:
> > I don't think it matters too much.  To a non-programmer - like my parents,
> > or, I imagine, Joshua's - then python, guile, lisp, ruby, smalltalk, tcl,
> > perl, vb, and any of the other scripting languages, are all equally alien.
> > So what if perl lets you get closer to an English sentence, or if ruby is
> > more orthogonal, or if smalltalk lets you Do More With Less.
> That doesn't quite explain why even a horribly designed language
> (language design-wise) has gained so much popularity and use even by
> non-programmers (and of course I speak of M$ VisualBasic).  :-)

Of course.  The reason for THAT is because they don't know any better and
it's already installed on the machines they're given.

VB also makes the simple things exceptionally simple, thus sucking people
in.  It unfortunately makes the hard things nigh-on impossible, unlike
just about any of the other languages I mentioned.  Except tcl, which
also blows goats.

> Literally millions of non-programmers do commonly write quite successful
> VB programs and are in effect successful amateur programmers even though
> they might not admit it themselves.

Yep.  When you only set yourself easy targets, they're easy to achieve.
Now, see how those people cope when they try to do anything that's not
quite so simple.  They tear their hair out in frustration.  As a very
competent programmer (he writes games for a living) once screamed in an
IRC channel we both haunt: "VB MAKES ME WANT TO SMOKE CRACK".

> >                          you've still got to learn logic, basic maths,
> > and a whole new language family when you learn your first programming
> > language.
> Though it's not so bad as you might think.  People with a basic
> education generally do have those skills, though they don't usually
> exercise them adequately, especially not after they've completed high
> school.

Hmmph.  In the dim and distant past, I was unemployed (well no, I was lazy
and decided to take advantage of the welfare state, but that's another
story) and spent a few hours a week tutoring final-year Computing students
at the local sixth-form college*.  These were bright kids, who were
getting pretty good marks from their teachers.  And they were, by the
standards I set at the time, bloody awful.  My standards have gone up a LOT
since then too.  They had problems with the most basic things, like how to
describe the problem they were trying to solve.

At around the same time, I had a couple of private students who I was
teaching to program.  Again, bright kids, this time around 12 or 13.  Just
like their older counterparts, they had biiig problems understanding what
I think are very simple things.  Like "the computer does EXACTLY what you
tell it, in exactly the order you tell it".  And the corollary "anything
the computer does it does because you told it to".

Maybe I'm a terrible teacher.  Maybe I expected too much of my students.
<shrug>  However, I seem to manage to educate and persuade perfectly
satisfactorily nowadays.

So no, I don't think people do have those skills.  They learn them in
school, they can apply the appropriate skills in the environments they
first came across them (basic maths in the maths exam, for example), but
people seem to have a hard time generalising and combining those skills.
Without combining them, they're useless.

> > And to do that they need to be provided with tools *and* the education to
> > use them.  The tools ain't a problem.  The education is.  The school-level
> > computer education I see here is oriented to making sure the drones know
> > how to drive a word processor in dummy mode.
> I do have the feeling that's been what's happened in computer education
> since I got out of the education business back in about 1984....  :-(

Heh.  I had fantastic computer education for the two years that it was
taught to me.  When my school first got computers, kids as young as I was
weren't allowed to touch 'em.  We were too likely to get little-kid-slime
in the expensive machines :-)  But I shoulder-surfed the older kids, and
by the time we were allowed to use them, I already knew my way around
BASIC.  I was lucky enough to have a good teacher who recognised that a
few of us had Clue, so after a few lessons, he gave a few of us the docs,
showed us how to get at the machine's built-in assembler, and just let us
play.  But I only had that for two years.  I had another five years of
school education, during which time I dropped computing all together
(wasn't being taught anything new, got bored, studied music instead), but
my contemporaries were doing reasonably interesting stuff.  But in the years
since it's all gone to the dogs.

> But does this mis-treatment of computer education by public schools
> actually deter the average educated person's ability to learn something
> about a computer?

I went to private schools.  But I know that the private schools' computer
education is now just as crap as the state schools.  Trouble is, y'see,
the private schools got computers first, and did good stuff with them.
Then the state schools bought them a bit later, and curriculums were set
with exams at the end of them, and the private schools' syllabuses were
dumbed down to get exam grades.  I never learnt word processing, so I
would have failed the exams if I'd sat them.  And no, I'm not saying that
the state schools fucked things up.  It was idiots setting the exams that
fucked things up.

Oo-err, that was a bit of a rant :-)

So anyway, get rid of the word 'public'.  Yes, I think it does deter them
from learning.  They learn how to use one or two applications.  They are
taught - maybe explicitly, maybe implicitly - that they don't need to know
more, and that the Great Bill Gates will provide for their needs.

TBH, I don't think that the average person *can* learn much about computers.
Just like the average person is not capable of painting great works of art.
They're too complex.  I doubt it's possible to teach the ability to examine
problems and create solutions, and to pull together all the disparate bits
of knowledge and all the seperate skills that they possess into a functioning
whole.  And I don't really care that most people will never be able to
wax lyrical about microprocessor architectures or the comparitive merits of
different programming languages.  I have skills they need, they have skills
I need.  No problem.  Those people fix cars, keep the trains running,
cook exquisite meals, and make large quantities of beer for me.

The one profession outside our own which prizes both analytical skills and
creative flair is the law.  Now tell me, how many law students are actually
taught those.  Judging by the quality of lawyers, precious few.  In fact,
I'd say none.  Those lawyers who shine out as actually being good at what
they do simply have much the same innate talents as that tiny proportion of
computer techs who excel at what they do.  Accept it, most people are merely
technicians at their job (doesn't matter what that job is).  Tis a pity
that so few find the role for which they have talent.

In my next message, I will abolish poverty, make renewable energy viable,
and start a colony on Mars.

I'm in cynical mode tonight.

* - UK-to-US translation: the final two years before university

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons