It's Not You, It's Them: Why Programming Languages Are Hard To Teach 📺
I have a new programer hero: Zed Shaw.
I've been teaching programming for a few years now, and I've come to realize that the harder a languages is to teach, the more poorly designed it is.
—Zed Shaw
One of the article Zed cited is: [Static vs. dynamic type systems: an empirical study about the relationship between type casts and development time By Stefan Hanenberg. At http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590n/10au/hanenberg-oopsla2010.pdf , accessed on 2014-04-15 ]
Lots of programer celebrities are idiots, or scam artists.
… what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names — otherwise you would be selling nothing — like “Structured Analysis and Design”, “Software Engineering”, “Maturity Models”, “Management Information Systems”, “Integrated Project Support Environments” “Object Orientation” and “Business Process Re-engineering” (the latter three being known as IPSE, OO and BPR, respectively). — Edsger W Dijkstra (1930 to 2002), in EWD 1175: The strengths of the academic enterprise.
The idiotish includes: Guido (Python).
- Lambda in Python 3000
- The Fate of Lambda in Python 3000 and Scheme v300
- Python, Lambda, Guido: is Language Design Just Solving Puzzles?
- Why Python Lambda is Broken
- Syntax Design: Python's Indentation vs Nesting
- Python Scope Complexity, Shallow Copy, Deep Copy, Circular List, and the Garbage Underneath Computer Languages
- Python: dict={} vs dict.clear()
- Python Syntax Problem: Comment and Backslash
- Python Syntax Soup: x in y
- Docstring Convention: Python vs Emacs Lisp
- Python 3: Map with Side Effect Doesn't Work If Result is Not Used
- The Idiocy of Python's Function Parameter Specification
- Python Problem: String Methods, Functions, Slashes, Backslashes
The scam artistish includes: Larry Wall (Perl), Rob Pike (unix stuff, golang), Martin Fowler (agile shit), etc.
- Node.js Creator Ryan Dahl on Software Complexity
- Programing Language: Steve Yegge on Dynamic Languages
- Internet History, Netscape, Dot Com, Code Rush 📺
- Theodore Gray: Future of Text Book, iPad, Education 📺
- Neal Stephenson at Google Talk 📺
- Sergey Brin Talk on China, Wikipedia, Search Engines, … 📺
- Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon 📺
- OCaml Use in Industry: Janestreet Talk by Yaron Minsky 📺