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http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/35...evoted-to-code/

(Sorry, only copy of the cover I could find.) the content link is here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/

Thanks for posting.

I got a bit into the article and reached two quick conclusions:

1. There's no way I need to know 72 pages worth of stuff about code.

2. bloomberg.com is the most annoying website I've ever visited, and even if I needed to know all that stuff, I'd never get very far into it as it's presented. (I hope there's a way for regular readers to avoid having their eyeballs assaulted!)

Edit: I wonder how many people, people who've heretofore been totally disinterested in code, like me, in particular...those at whom the article is directed, will actually read the entire thing? (I didn't find it particularly enticing, let alone gripping, reading.)

Well, in spite of my name, I have a reading disorder. However, I feel like I should get a copy at the newsstand and at least try to glean a few things from it. I was thinking I might take a class in Basic or something one day but no doubt I will end up in the corner wearing a pointy hat.

From my viewpoint of over 30 years spent as a software developer, it is arguable whether those who really need to read this article would ever have the time and/or patience to wade through it. At least those who should and would read it are very few and far between. I on the other hand found it a reasonably well done and entertaining exposition of what I already knew because I did it for a living for the bulk of my professional life.

From my viewpoint, Paul Ford generally has it right, particularly where he talks about the communications gap between management, middle management, and the developers. Each is is in their own separate world with its own language (or at the very least wildly different understandings of the same words) and they very seldom listen much less try to understand one another. IMO Paul's article should be required reading for at least middle management and that part of senior management responsible for software development. It would have been better if there were a corresponding article about development written by someone in middle and/or senior management. The ideal would be a dialog between the three viewpoints, but I fear no one in management would have the patience to participate in what would necessarily be a give and take process. For too many senior managers the only opinion and viewpoint that counts is there own and everything else is wanted time and effort. I saw that played out far too many times in my role as an instructor.

Another observation is Paul's viewpoint and analogies are all from the part of the development world he knows, the business or information technology side of the house. I was in the part of the computing world where we were working with control systems of one sort or another in an environment where if we got it wrong one or more of the "good guys" often died — usually very quickly. The business side could not tolerate the highly disciplined process we used on our side of the house. We on the other hand could not tolerate mistakes that might cost the wrong life. (I will brag and say our disciplined process produced products on a faster schedule, at lower cost, and with ridiculously low error rates.) Unfortunately due to a change of ownership the senior managers from the new company did not place any value on lower cost or fewer errors. To them errors were an opportunity to sell upgrades and we typically worked on a cost plus basis.

Please not BASIC! There are some semi-useful dialects of Basic but straight BASIC will only teach you poor and hopelessly outmoded software design and development techniques. Apple's new programming language, SWIFT, has a relatively simple grammar and syntax, enforces good software design and development discipline, and Apple will give you the development environment, compilers, and training manuals FREE. If you want to take a course in your local community college or university Consider Java. I would not recommend C, C++, and Objective C because they are almost too concise and obtuse to read and comprehend unless the developer includes voluminous comments in the source code which they seldom do. (Some developers consider incomprehensible code job security — I know as I have fired more than one for that very reason.)

I think the article very badly needs to be indexed; I, for one, would be far more inclined to read parts striking me as salient than I am to read through 72 pages to discover them.

The problem is you are unlikely to recognize, much less understand those points you consider salient until you have absorbed the full content of the article. When I was developing technical training the first thing I learned is a common vocabulary is essential to accurate learning. So the first twenty-five to thirty percent of each course had to be devoted to developing and agreeing on a common vocabulary not only between the instructor and the students but among the students themselves. Your index would be useful if this were intended as a reference document but it is obviously intended as a high level overview (like from 80,000 feet above) of a very complex and interrelated sets of knowledge. In this context an index would completely defeat the purpose.

Whether the author has achieved his apparent goal is arguable, but the accuracy of the content — from the author's viewpoint of business/info — is not.

I would submit that BASIC is an excellent introductory programming language. Most modern languages have lots of bells and whistles, which by itself, isn't a bad thing. The problem tends to be that you can't write anything functional much beyond "hello world" without already having an understanding of too many things. The beginner's learning curve is just too steep.

That's what I like about the VB variants. You make a new project, and hit COMPILE and it runs. It doesn't DO anything, but there it is. Then you stop it and drag in a few buttons, list boxes, edit fields, etc and hit COMPILE and it still runs. And you can play with the controls. They don't DO anything yet, but again you have functionality right off the blocks, without even having typed a keystroke of code. I think this is what scares a lot of people away from programming, they know that they can't just open up Xcode and dork around with it for a minute or two and actually have anything to show for it. And then when they ask you "ok how do I make that button do something?", that's a question you can answer and demonstrate in 10 seconds, not 2-5 minutes.

"instant gratification" is a powerful learning tool.

I would also add that any language that easily introduces the learner to orderly structure and a sense of logical progression is also worthwhile.

If "instant gratification" is your goal, then take a serious look at Apple's SWIFT. It can actually execute the code as you write it. It has a simple easily understood grammar and syntax, is object oriented not procedural, and compiles to relatively efficient code.

"I think everyone in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think." - Steve Jobs, The Lost Interview

I bought the magazine but haven't read the article yet. But I will and that is because it is printed in big, legible type. Very smart. Raygun Magazine was radical when it came out but set a dangerous precedent. That being said, the article about Bryan Adams that the editor printed in Zapf Dingbats because it was so boring no one would read it anyone was, well, it was.