[hacker_9]

Writing software is hard yes, but I disagree with the author: I do blame the tools. Every language since C has been created as a reaction. What I mean by this is:

> C++ was created as a reaction to OOP being so difficult to do in C.

> Java as a reaction to memory management being difficult.

> C# as a reaction to Java not being concise enough.

> Javascript as a reaction to HTML not being dynamic enough.

> Go has a reaction to parallelism/concurrency being difficult.

> Rust as a reaction to what C++ has become.

And it goes on. There are many other languages too that you won't hear of that are created as a reaction to the status quo not being good enough either, but those ones I listed were backed by a big enough majority to become known. There is also the Lisp family and the functional paradigm too, which come round again and again in popularity.

All these languages/tools are the problem because no one is sitting back, and pro-actively realising that the entirety of these languages are no good. I am not saying this to start an argument, I have happily been a programmer for 15 years. But I recognise the problems, and they are the same problems, that will repeat over and over again ad-infinitum. I actually started writing down problems I've found and possible solutions and it's already reached over 30 pages.

What it boils down to is that all languages share the same flaw; they specify the what and the how, but never the why. Until we figure out how to encode the why, we will forever be going in circles.

[jasode]

>all languages share the same flaw; they specify the what and the how, but never the _why_. Until we figure out how to encode the _why_, we will forever be going in circles.

I don't believe encoding the "why" is possible.

The mapping from "why"s to "machine code" is not predefined bijective nor injective.[1] It can't be well-defined enough to make a deterministic compiler. If you restrict the set of "whys" to a very narrow set of "understandable" inputs by the compiler, you've basically re-implemented the specifying of the *"whats" again.

Building ever higher abstractions is tractable because it's what we've been doing for decades: combine several lower-level "whats" into higher-level "whats". But encoding the "whys" seems to be unsolvable. Either that or I'm not understanding what you're communicating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injective_function

[sanderjd]

Is this a "flaw"? It seems to me that it's just a normal incremental process.

Wasn't C a reaction to assembly languages not being portable enough? Weren't assembly languages a reaction to machine code not being easy enough to work with? Wasn't machine code a reaction to punch-card systems being too inflexible? Etc. etc.

[pg_bot]

I disagree, the tooling around most ecosystems is fine you just need someone who knows what they are doing to help guide people in the right direction. Technical leadership is sorely lacking in our industry, and when you are solving business problems management cares about solving customer's issues on time rather that craftsmanship. Therefore people go down the path of doing just enough to get it done rather than doing it right. If you never are forced to do something correct, you are likely never going to be able to build great products. This leads to patchwork engineering and the veritable big ball of mud that most products look like behind the scenes. It's up to us as professionals to simplify, abstract, focus, and enforce standards so that you can build maintainable products faster. Very few problems that we are working on are "difficult" from the technical side of things. Identify when you've made a mistake, think about about how it could be made better, and then apply the knowledge you've gained when building something new. If you repeat that process you will be a lot better than the majority of your peers.

[catnaroek]

> Very few problems that we are working on are "difficult" from the technical side of things.

I'd say these problems are technically difficult, just not deep. To clarify the difference:

(0) A difficult problem requires a lot of effort to solve. Example: Finding and fixing use-after-free errors in a buggy C program.

(1) A deep problem requires creativity and insight to solve. Example: Inventing and formalizing Rust's borrow checker rules.

Programmers are naturally attracted to deep problems, but not difficult ones. In fact, reducing difficult problems to deep ones is often considered progress, for good reason. After you come up with the right insight, solving a deep problem can be very easy. But solving a difficult problem will always be hard.

[etblg]

Could you elaborate on what you think a better direction for creating a programming language would be? I'm not sure I follow how that would be done in a way that isn't like the list you described. I don't see someone wandering out of a cave and unveiling a p-lang that didn't build off of known drawbacks of past languages.

[d13]

I think that's part of the problem - none of us have yet the conceptual ability to see what the answer is. We're just scratching symbols on cave walls. Until some massive unexpected breakthrough or insight, it seems like programming languages are doomed to continue circling the same old ground.

[norea-armozel]

I don't know if tooling matters all that much when you think about larger projects like CRMs or kernels. Those are the kinds of projects that can fail just on the initial discovery of requirements since communication between different stakeholders can lapse easily. Tools can be replaced but the stakeholders are there for the lifetime of the product.

[d13]

I agree, we haven't solved programming yet. It might take another 50 or 100 years... or longer.

[ohgh1ieD]

This might be related:

https://xkcd.com/927/

Edit: Besides that, I agree, except one thing, I'd say C# is just MS's reaction that there is something awesome which does not belong to them.

[nxc18]

It doesn't matter which way you look at it, Java today, after all the work put into catching up, still pales in comparison to the C# of 2007.

Really, C# is a public service to correct for something that for so many reasons should be awesome having turned out so-so at best.

(You may say writing a million getters and setters, declaring types twice, stuffing your code in deep directory hierarchies, and dealing with bizarre licensing/version issues feels normal; that's the Java talking.)

[douche]

C# is pretty much what Java ought to be, if it hadn't had a lost half decade where Sun/Oracle sat on their hands after 1.6.