Re: Semi-Automated Programming

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Tue, 13 Jan 1998 12:19:29 -0800 (PST)

> > what we need are tools to help
> > those programmers be much more productive with their time. Also, tools
> > like these will likely get rid of much of the more boring aspects of
> > computer programming, which are boring because they require very little
> > thought and could be better done by a computer.

That's exactly what people have been saying for the last 18 years
I've been programming, and bits and pieces of it have been accomplished:
first it was Fortran, then "structured" programming languages like
Algol, then "Object-oriented" programming; next will probably be Agoric
programming.

All of these things helped, and more will help, but don't delude
yourself into imagining that programming will ever be an easy job.
No matter how high-level and automated the tools get, the products
produced by those tools plus human hard work and ingenuity will
always be superior to those produced by tools and simple operators.
And users will demand the superior products.

Programming is, at the root, the art of accurately and completely
communicating a problem to machine that can solve the problem
faster than you can. It cannot, then, ever be simpler in concept
than the problem itself, and the more computer power you have,
the more complex problems you can solve, and the more difficult
it will be to communicate them accurately and completely, trendy
tools and languages notwithstanding.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC