TITLE: Processing Old Languages and Thinking of New
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 30, 2012  4:00 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I'm beginning to look at the compilers my students produced
this semester.  I teach a relatively traditional compiler
course; we want students to experience as many different
important ideas as possible within the time constraints of
a semester.  As you might expect, my students' programs
read in a text file and produce a text file.  These files
contain a high-level program and an assembly language
program, respectively.

I love seeing all the buzz floating around non-textual
languages and new kinds of programming environments such
as
<A HREF="http://vimeo.com/36579366">
   Bret Victor's reactive documents</A>
and
<A HREF="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table">
   Light Table</A>.
Languages and environments like these make my traditional
compiler course seem positively archaic.  I still think
the traditional course adds a lot of value to students'
experience.  Before you can think outside of the box,
you have to
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2005-05.html#e2005-05-16T15_41_16.htm">
   start with a box</A>.

These new programming ideas really are outside the confines
of how we think about programs.  Jonathan Edwards
<A HREF="http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=680">
   reminds us</A>
how tightly related languages and tools are:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
As long as we are programming in descendants of assembly
language, we will continue to program in descendants of
text editors.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Edwards has been exploring this pool of ideas for a few
years now.  I first mentioned his work in this blog
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2004-12.html#e2004-12-27T11_19_03.htm">
   back in 2004</A>.
As he has learned, the challenge we face in trying to
re-think how we program is complicated by the network of
ideas in which we work.  It isn't just syntax or language
or IDE or support tools that we have to change.  To change
one in a fundamental way requires changing them all.

On top of that, once researchers create something new, we
will have to find a way to migrate there.  That involves
education and lots of existing practitioners.  Here's
hoping that the small steps people are taking with Tangle
and Light Table can help us bridge the gap.
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