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by mbrock
4527 days ago
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"In this sense programming is like writing a poetry - it must emerge and form in ones mind before it could be written down. The best poetry is written exactly like this - committed to the paper suddenly as it emerges, without any later changes." Are you sure that's true? Can you cite some examples? Lisp is famous for its interactivity: the read-eval-print loop, SLIME, Lisp Machines, Emacs, etc. Avid Lisp hackers even edit code inside of running systems. The "bottom-up approach" to programming (as advocated by Paul Graham) is almost the opposite of what you describe, isn't it? Generally speaking, I think both programmers and poets work in a dynamic way with their texts: moving stuff around, seeing what works, doing experiments, asking others, etc. That's one reason why Knuth's idea of literate programming seems so academic and remote for most programmers: how are you going to keep all of that text up-to-date when you start refactoring? |
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Your each iteration in a bottom-up process could be based on a small insight after thinking about a subproblem. Later one just re-uses ones own realizations and adapts them to new requirements.
Also I think that it should be not just linear bottom-up process, but recursive one, when you regularly "call yourself" with the old problem, but a "new you, evolved with experience". Starting from the bottom, from basic building blocks is crucial. The only "addition" is that nothing will be set in stone and you should come back to "simplify" and refactor even what is at the very bottom.
I also never advocated Knuth's idea or that whole programs should be printed as books (while some procedures such as map or append are worth to be printed and framed).
As for poetry, well, I thing almost every youth wrote some in his late teens or early twenties, and yes, I told it wrong, not a whole poem emerges in ones mind, but a few central passages, the main scheme, to which some ornaments could be added later.