"But It Doesn't Mean Anything" – A demonstration of the value of computer code

86 点作者 inglesp超过 11 年前

17 条评论

chriswarbo超过 11 年前

Paxman's point about code being 'meaningless' was to emphasise that the end goal of this initiative is stupid. It's not "learn to think analytically", it's not "learn to express your ideas precisely", it's not "learn to instruct a computer", it's not even "learn to use a computer", it's "learn to code".Computers are clearly important, and Paxman would not deny it, but that doesn't make school IT classes any less pointless. They are terrible because they teach what buttons to click to make Microsoft Word 97 display text in bold, rather than the ability to think about problems; arguably they teach against thinking about problems (like "how do I make text bold?"), in favour of rote learning and hand-holding. Likewise, teaching kids which punctuation marks to press in Notepad to make a HTML element turn green is also a terrible idea, because it's focusing on the code. This is also the most common complaint I've heard about undergraduate computer science courses (teaching one particular language's syntax rather than how to solve problems).I saw this summed up best on /. <a href="http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771525&cid=46205325" rel="nofollow">http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771525&cid=4...</a>"The problem here is that "code" is being used as a synonym for "computer magic"."This captures the essence of this interview exactly. Paxman made a provocative remark, and did Dexter argue against it? No, she agreed with him and said some nonsense about code being for computers:"It doesn't mean anything to you, or to me yet, but it's the set of instructions that you type into a computer to get an output."In other words "computer magic". What Dexter doesn't realise, probably because she's not spent a significant amount of time programming, is that code is for people to understand and only incidentally for machines to execute. If programming was only about satisfying the computer, our keyboards would only have two big buttons: 0 and 1.Now, this was essentially true in the early days of computing (punching cards) but we've progressed beyond this. The reason we use code is to allow people to discover, understand and build on ideas.

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billyjobob超过 11 年前

Paxman's whole shtick is that he argues with the people he interviews. Usually it is quite effective, because mostly he interviews politicians who are full of shit and he points it out in a way that more reverential interviewers don't. However, he probably doesn't mean everything he says: he just takes a contrarian view to whatever the interviewee says.

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throwaway13qf85超过 11 年前

I recently spoke to a guy who sells swaps for a major investment bank.The basic idea is that he comes up with some trading strategy, and writes the code that computes the profit/loss associated with that strategy if it was executed at market fixing prices (typically the market open or close each day).The bank sells a total return swap on this strategy, which means that in return for a fee from the client, they pay the client the stream of profits (or losses) each month that would have resulted from trading this strategy. Behind the scenes, the bank trades the strategy (or something like it) in order to hedge the risk associated with the swap, so that they can earn the fee approximately risk free.There's an obvious problem with this, which is that the client basically has to take the bank's word for what the profit/loss of the strategy is. To counter that, the guy who came up with the strategy now has to write a 100+ page document in legalese, which outlines exactly how the profit/loss on the strategy is calculated. This has to be sufficiently detailed that someone couple re-implement the code themselves to check it. The guy I spoke to said that this documentation takes up >50% of his time.I'm sure everyone here will appreciate how incredible it is that a bank will pay someone six figures every year to spend more than half their time writing documentation that literally does nothing more than reproduce a piece of code, except about 50 times more verbosely.Different symbols, but it doesn't mean anything.

ghswa超过 11 年前

It's important to remember that the "year of code" initiative is not related to the new curriculum coming into force in September 2014. My wife is writing a book for the new curriculum and, from what she's told me, it sounds quite good.At Key Stage 1 (ages 5 to 7) children are taught about algorithms, that they are a way of breaking tasks into a sequence of steps that can be reused to solve problems.They will also be taught about the pervasiveness of software - about the different kinds of devices and appliances that rely on software.Finally, they will be taught about privacy. I'm not sure of the content but I assume it'll be about managing information about themselves.

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grannyg00se超过 11 年前

So much of that is hard to watch.Particularly the teaching of jQuery to people who are just starting out. And the multiple assertions that one can "pick it up in a day", whether it be programming or teaching skills.Seems to be about throwing together a web page in a day rather than learning to code.And it seems the usefulness of computer programs doesn't extend beyond ecards, web sites, and "apps".

w_t_payne超过 11 年前

"Code" is a horrible word.I prefer "source documents", or, if pressed, "Formal descriptions of the program".Using the word "code" implies that the document is "encoded" somehow, which is plainly undesirable and wrong.With some notable (1) exceptions, the primary consumer of a "source document" is a human being, not a machine.The machine's purpose is to ensure the formal validity and correctness of the document - but the majority of the informational content of the document (variable names, structure, comments) is exclusively directed to human developers.We will never program in a "wild" natural language, but many programming languages (2) make a deliberate effort to support expressions which simulate or approximate natural language usage, albeit restricted to a particular idiomatic form.There will always be a tension between keeping a formal language simple enough to reason about and permitting free, naturalistic expression - but this is the same tension that makes poetry and haiku so appealing as an art form.So many source documents appear to be "in code", not because this is a necessary part of programming, but because it is very very difficult to write things which combine sufficient simplicity for easy understanding, and the correct representation of a difficult and complex problem. In most of these cases, clear understanding is baffled not by the programming language, but by the complexity of the real world.The rigidly deterministic nature of the computer forces the programmer to deal with a myriad of inconsistencies and complications that the non-programmer is able to elide or gloss over with linguistic and social gymnastics. The computer forces us to confront these complications, and to account for them.In the same way that Mathematics isn't really about numbers, but about the skill and craftsmanship of disciplined thought, programming isn't really about computers, but about what happens when you can no longer ignore the details within which the devil resides.(1) Assembler & anything involving regular expressions. (2) Python

pessimizer超过 11 年前

>What angers me here is Paxman's attempt to make a virtue of his own ignorance.It's important to be aggressively ignorant when interviewing people who are making a case for something. It's a hand-waving and "common sense" repellant.You can't just say that everyone should learn to code because coding is important and everyone needs to know how to do it.Other than the central argument, though, I actually love this post:) Paxman shouldn't mind being made a strawman for a pretty exploration like this. More, please.

vhold超过 11 年前

This made me realize just how much the media's visual portrayal of computer programming is a problem. When he said "It doesn't mean anything" he's gesturing over to a stereotypical background image representation of code which is all tilted, blurred, overlapping, clashing colors, etc. It's purposefully skewed in every dimension to make it incomprehensible, and he actually uses that as evidence about something.

shizzy0超过 11 年前

The interviewer is partly right, and students who have a natural aptitude[1] for programming often recognize this: Code is meaningless. At the application level, you may have something that looks like an image. Underneath, you may represent it with numbers. Numbers, however, are also a fiction represented with bits. The meaning is based entirely on one's interpretation. Creating a mapping between meaningless formalism and meaningful interpretation is the principle obstacle to learning to program.I understand the point the author is trying to make, and the interviewer in the video has not grasped the above. To answer his concern, ask him what meaning does the letter 'd' have? Next to none, but in composition it can provide quite a lot of meaning. (This is an argument from Hofstadter.)[1]: I had a study/source for this, but I can't find it.

chrismcb超过 11 年前

So, they are teaching people to code, so they can make ecards? It is probably much easier to use something already written to create an ecard... And that is my whole point with this "learn to code." People think that everyone in the future will need to know how to code. No, in the future it will be important to know how to use the computer, but not everyone needs to know how to code. Just like not everyone needs to know how to do everything else in the world. You can teach people how use computers, without teaching them to program. And teaching them to program won't necessarily teach them how to use computers.

JoshuaRedmond超过 11 年前

I don't think that Paxman's comment was as flippant as this article is making out. If you watch the video, his comment follows Lottie Dexter vaguely waving at the graphic of code behind him in desperate attempt to describe what code actually is when she quite sure herself. What he sees is a blurry mess of code pulled from who-knows-where that blatantly isn't of any use in it's current form. I'm not trying to downplay some of the awesome things done with code in the article, but I think the comment it's based on has been misunderstood.

cLeEOGPw超过 11 年前

Since the interview is seen by general population, he was just asking questions that an average computer illiterate person would ask and at the same time challenging and testing her on the subject.

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jorgeleo超过 11 年前

I found funny that she said "But it doesn't mean anything" when lots of artist now days make a career out of using FFT in Autotune...Did I say that out loud?

pweissbrod超过 11 年前

I recommend anyone who doesnt understand learning the fundamentals of writing code read the book "player piano" by Kurt Vonnegut which depicts a dystopian future where most human labor is replaced by machinery and software and engineers and managers rule society.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)</a>

moron4hire超过 11 年前

If the general populace doesn't need to learn about programming because it won't mean anything to them, then the general populace really doesn't need to study the vast majority of history that we're forced to sit through and regurgitate in unimaginative fashion.I, on the other, will sit on the side of the liberal arts and say that any and all learning is worthwhile.

lcfg超过 11 年前

The "Russel Brand" link (just before the footnotes) is pointing to the wrong url.

jwmoz超过 11 年前

Paxman is a twat.