TITLE: Programming as Discovery and Expression
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 01, 2006  9:44 AM
DESC: 
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<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-05.html#e2006-05-23T16_23_40.htm">
   Recently</A>
I pointed you to Dick Gabriel's
<A HREF="http://www.dreamsongs.com/ArtOfLisp.html">
   The Art of Lisp &amp; Writing</A>,
which I found when I looked for a Gabriel essay that
discussed triggers and Richard Hugo.  I must confess
that I recommended Dick's essay despite never having
read it; then again, I've never been disappointed by
one of his essays and figured you wouldn't be, either.

I read the essay over tortellini last night, and I
wasn't disappointed.  I learned from his discussion
of the inextricable partners in creation, discovery
and presentation.  I learned about mapmakers and how
their job is a lot like an engineer -- and a lot like
a writer.

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Most of exploration is in the nature of the locally
expected:  What is on the other side of that hill is
likely to be a lot like what's on this side.  Only
occasionally is the explorer taken totally by surprise,
and it is for these times that many explorers live.
Similarly for writers:  What a writer thinks up in the
next minute is likely to be a lot like what is being
thought this minute -- but not always:  Sometimes an
idea so initially apparently unrelated pops up that
the writer is as surprised as anyone.  And that's why
writers write.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

As anyone who has ever written a program worth writing
will tell you, that is also why programmers program.
But then that is Dick's point.  Further, he reminds us
why languages such as Lisp and Smalltalk never seem to
die: because programmers want them, need them.

Gabriel has been writing about programming-and-writing
for many years now, and I think that his metaphor can
help us to understand our discipline better.  For example,
by explaining writing as "two acts put together: the act
of discovery and the act of perfecting the presentation",
the boundaries of which blur for each writer and for each
work, we see in relief one way in which "software
engineering" and the methodologists who drive it have
gone astray.  I love how Dick disdains terms such as
"software developer", "software design and implementation".
For him, it's all programming, and to call it something
else simply obscures a lot of what makes programming
programming in the first place.

Reading this essay crystallized in mind another reason
that I think Java, Ada, and C++ are not the best (or even
okay) choices for CS 1:  They are not languages for discovery.
They are not languages that encourage play, trying to solve
a hard problem and coming to understand the problem in the
process of writing the program that solves it.  That's the
great of of programming, and it is exactly what novice
programmers need to experience.  To do so, they need a
language that lets them -- helps them? -- both to discover
and to express.  Java, Ada, and C++ are Serious Languages
that optimize on presentation.  That's not what novice
programmers need, and probably not the pros need, either.

This essay also may explain the recent rise of Ruby as a
Programmer's Programming Language.  It is a language for
both to discovery and expression.

As usual, Gabriel has explored a new bit of landscape for
me, discovered something of value, and given us a map of
the land.
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