On 30 Nov 2006, at 23:56, Emmanuel Gaillot wrote:
> I'm not sure whom I should thank aside Andy and Ivan for organizing a
> great conference last Saturday. I much enjoyed my time with you all, I
> got a lot of fun and a couple of matters on which to ponder.

I'll second that. Well done chaps.

Just think, we were there at the very first one.

Duncan

Everyone,

I'm not sure whom I should thank aside Andy and Ivan for organizing a
great conference last Saturday.  I much enjoyed my time with you all, I
got a lot of fun and a couple of matters on which to ponder.

Next time I'll make sure I understand the opportunity for a PoMoPro /
XP-Day combo early enough -- that should give me more time for beer and
discussions with the group ;^)

I've had a safe trip back to Paris, hadn't given all the thoughts I'd
need to on what I've dicovered last Saturday, and hope to write a blog
about it in a near future.

Cheers,
-- Emmanuel.

So, I blogged PoMoPro right on the heels of an entry about designing
away preconditions:

http://michaelfeathers.typepad.com/michael_feathers_blog/2006/09/pomopro_the_1st\
.html

Have many people signed up yet?

On 8/19/06, Michael Feathers <mfeathers@...> wrote:
> Will the conference have a cool t-shirt or is that a bit too "grand
> narrative"?

I suppose the conference would have many different cool t-shirts put
together by the attendees by stitching together the cool t-shirts they
got at other conferences.

Will the conference have a cool t-shirt or is that a bit too "grand
narrative"?

Ivan Moore wrote:

>PoMoPro - the first international conference on
>postmodern programming
>
>Date: Sat 25th November (LONDON)
>
>BCS SPA Specialist Group
>Venue: BCS Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street,
>London WC2E 7HA, England
>Cost: SPA/BCS members: £35, non-members £40
>
>See the website for registration and more details:
>http://www.bcs-oops.org.uk/pomopro.html
>
>What is Postmodern Programming?
>
>Lots of software is already written and can solve your
>problems, if you can only get it to do what you need.
>Postmodern programming is about using code that
>already exists, and not writing much code yourself.
>This is usually in the form of gluing together or
>configuring other people's code. This is the reality
>of "enterprise" software today.
>
>Postmodern programmers recognise this fact and work
>with it rather than pretend that it isn't the case and
>come up with, for example, a programming language or
>paradigm that would solve all programming problems
>once and for all if only everybody does everything
>properly - that way - the one true way. There is no
>"one
>true way".
>
>The PoMoPro conference:
>
>The aim of the conference is for attendees to learn
>stuff that they can really use. There will be more
>hands on programming than most conferences. It's
>neither academic nor vendor specific. It's not
>language or technology specific. There are only two
>sessions at this first postmodern programming
>conference - a keynote and a workshop.
>
>The keynote is by James Noble and Robert Biddle, whose
>OOPSLA 2002 paper "Notes on postmodern programming"
>challenged the software development world to recognise
>the reality of current software practice. The
>workshop, facilitated by Ivan Moore and Nat Pryce, is
>a re-run of "Scrapheap Challenge" that was very well
>received at OOPSLA 2005. Participants are given fun,
>non-trivial challenges to achieve and can construct
>solutions using any means available, including any
>software and services that they can find on the
>Internet.
>
>Who is it for?
>
>This conference involves programming. It's for
>software development practitioners, not for the
>post-technical.
>
>If you would like to attend, please book now as spaces
>are very limited in order to facilitate discussion and
>interaction amongst all participants.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>BCS SPA Home Page -
>http://bcs-spa.org/
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>NOTE the XPDay 2006 conference on Monday 27th &
>Tuesday 28th November 2006. See: http://xpday.org/
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

...get busy with its built-in embedded functional language
http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog/?p=239

What's nice about this is that it's real users finding good ways to
apply bits of ther system in new ways to get their stuff done, and do
it better that the "feature" being added to a subsequent release by
the official developers.

Keith

PoMoPro - the first international conference on
postmodern programming

Date: Sat 25th November (LONDON)

BCS SPA Specialist Group
Venue: BCS Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street,
London WC2E 7HA, England
Cost: SPA/BCS members: £35, non-members £40

See the website for registration and more details:
http://www.bcs-oops.org.uk/pomopro.html

What is Postmodern Programming?

Lots of software is already written and can solve your
problems, if you can only get it to do what you need.
Postmodern programming is about using code that
already exists, and not writing much code yourself.
This is usually in the form of gluing together or
configuring other people's code. This is the reality
of "enterprise" software today.

Postmodern programmers recognise this fact and work
with it rather than pretend that it isn't the case and
come up with, for example, a programming language or
paradigm that would solve all programming problems
once and for all if only everybody does everything
properly - that way - the one true way. There is no
"one
true way".

The PoMoPro conference:

The aim of the conference is for attendees to learn
stuff that they can really use. There will be more
hands on programming than most conferences. It's
neither academic nor vendor specific. It's not
language or technology specific. There are only two
sessions at this first postmodern programming
conference - a keynote and a workshop.

The keynote is by James Noble and Robert Biddle, whose
OOPSLA 2002 paper "Notes on postmodern programming"
challenged the software development world to recognise
the reality of current software practice. The
workshop, facilitated by Ivan Moore and Nat Pryce, is
a re-run of "Scrapheap Challenge" that was very well
received at OOPSLA 2005. Participants are given fun,
non-trivial challenges to achieve and can construct
solutions using any means available, including any
software and services that they can find on the
Internet.

Who is it for?

This conference involves programming. It's for
software development practitioners, not for the
post-technical.

If you would like to attend, please book now as spaces
are very limited in order to facilitate discussion and
interaction amongst all participants.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
BCS SPA Home Page -
http://bcs-spa.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE the XPDay 2006 conference on Monday 27th &
Tuesday 28th November 2006. See: http://xpday.org/

Brian Marick has written that we are now in the third age of software
development: The Age of the Scrapheap [1].

He suggests a Dump Picking [2] of the Month exercise like the
Pragmatics' Language of the Year exercise.  Agree on a software scrap,
learn to apply it and share the results.

What do you think would be a good scrap to start with?

I'd suggest Graphviz [3].  I've used it on the last three or four
projects I've worked on for documentation and visualisation.  I've
typed DOT files into a text editor while talking to users to create
quick domain models.  I've used graphviz to draw module dependency
diagrams for a Python API documentation generator.  I'm currently
using graphviz to map a large legacy C++ system and visualise
stability of its modules.

Maybe graphviz is too well known.  What other good tools are out there?

[1] http://www.testing.com/cgi-bin/blog/2006/06/06#three-ages
[2] http://www.freecycle.org/archives/000513.php
[3] http://www.graphviz.org

I'm just going to say something stupid off the top of my head.  Apologies in
advance.

Modernism found God dead and chose to make logic into a god.  And, like a
religion it made humans subsidiary to a diety.  As geeks we understand it,
because we see beauty in the logic of a crystal, or a theorem.  The arrogance of
modernism is to say: this is the logical way, and it doesn't matter whether,
say, Le Corbusier's housing feels right, it is right.  It is what the machine,
the embodiment of an impersonal mechanistic logic, says is right for man.

Maybe it is just me, but I do feel that modernism has this quasi-religious and
quasi-authoritarian quality.  Man felt powerless in the face of nature and
technology at the beginning of the 20th century and choose to place all his
hopes on the machine.

</hare-brained stupidity>

Michael

Keith Braithwaite wrote:

>
>Thinking of modernist German items reminds me of something my friend
>Mark said after returning from a year or so living with his then
>girlfiend in Bavaria. It's not, he said, that Germans are arrogant,
>it's just that they don't understand why anyone would do things
>differently from the the way they do them, since it is so clearly
>superior. That seems a very Modern sentiment, not surprising when you
>consider where much of Modernist design orginated. It's not
>particularly odious as utopianism goes, though. Modernism seems only
>to have become maglignant after its leading lights' escape from
>another, infinitely odious, "utopianism" in their, and its, homeland.
>
>Mark continued: and once you've been there for a while, you begin to
>see their point.
>
>Keith
>
>--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Steve Freeman
><steve@...> wrote:
>
>>I was thinking more of the Apple approach to branding and
>>presentation, rather than the messy internals underneath. Their view
>>seems to be very much that there's a consistent approach to the
>>experience of using their kit (it just works), rather than, say, the
>>linux cloud of functionality.
>>
>>S.
>>
>>On 10 Apr 2006, at 10:18, Martin Fowler wrote:
>>
>>>>I'm writing this on a Mac, very much a modernist
>>>>machine (OK, maybe that's not the best example :).
>>>
>>>Interesting in a talk James Noble took a different perspective. He
>>>contrasted the Kay dream of a dynabook running everything off the
>>>Modernist Smalltalk to the reality of the PowerBook running on
>>>decidedly
>>>post-modern Unix.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Well, a lot of the "just works" experience comes from their tight
control over what's inside the shiny shell. It will be interesting to
see what happens to that if/when the widely anticipated official
support for OS X on generic Intel boxes arrives.

I'm not compelled that the seamlessness of the mac experience is
particularly Modernist, though. No-one who wants to deploy on the Mac
is compelled to write in Objective C against Cocoa. They doen't even
need to target Aqua, X11 is there. They don't even need to write an
native app at all.

Ives's use of Modernist styleing cues on the outside of Macs is _very_
ironic postmodernsim. I once had to fall back on "like an Apple
product" when trying to explain to someone what was so great about a
late 60's Braun cine camera I inherited.

Thinking of modernist German items reminds me of something my friend
Mark said after returning from a year or so living with his then
girlfiend in Bavaria. It's not, he said, that Germans are arrogant,
it's just that they don't understand why anyone would do things
differently from the the way they do them, since it is so clearly
superior. That seems a very Modern sentiment, not surprising when you
consider where much of Modernist design orginated. It's not
particularly odious as utopianism goes, though. Modernism seems only
to have become maglignant after its leading lights' escape from
another, infinitely odious, "utopianism" in their, and its, homeland.

Mark continued: and once you've been there for a while, you begin to
see their point.

Keith

--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Steve Freeman
<steve@...> wrote:
>
> I was thinking more of the Apple approach to branding and
> presentation, rather than the messy internals underneath. Their view
> seems to be very much that there's a consistent approach to the
> experience of using their kit (it just works), rather than, say, the
> linux cloud of functionality.
>
> S.
>
> On 10 Apr 2006, at 10:18, Martin Fowler wrote:
> >> I'm writing this on a Mac, very much a modernist
> >> machine (OK, maybe that's not the best example :).
> >
> > Interesting in a talk James Noble took a different perspective. He
> > contrasted the Kay dream of a dynabook running everything off the
> > Modernist Smalltalk to the reality of the PowerBook running on
> > decidedly
> > post-modern Unix.
>

I was thinking more of the Apple approach to branding and
presentation, rather than the messy internals underneath. Their view
seems to be very much that there's a consistent approach to the
experience of using their kit (it just works), rather than, say, the
linux cloud of functionality.

S.

On 10 Apr 2006, at 10:18, Martin Fowler wrote:
>> I'm writing this on a Mac, very much a modernist
>> machine (OK, maybe that's not the best example :).
>
> Interesting in a talk James Noble took a different perspective. He
> contrasted the Kay dream of a dynabook running everything off the
> Modernist Smalltalk to the reality of the PowerBook running on
> decidedly
> post-modern Unix.

> I'm writing this on a Mac, very much a modernist
> machine (OK, maybe that's not the best example :).

Interesting in a talk James Noble took a different perspective. He
contrasted the Kay dream of a dynabook running everything off the
Modernist Smalltalk to the reality of the PowerBook running on decidedly
post-modern Unix.
--
Martin Fowler
http://martinfowler.com

Isn't this the same Simon Jenkins who backed the Millenium Dome?

It's true that Modernism failed in all sorts of ways, but it didn't
fail totally. I'm writing this on a Mac, very much a modernist
machine (OK, maybe that's not the best example :). People don't
listen to musique concrete? What about all those film scores and
sampling DJs? No mass callisthenics? Have you been to a gym recently?
And the Underground map is a modernist classic.
At one level, modernism was no more than an inevitable swing back to
classicism, a bit more extreme than usual perhaps.

The point about post-modernism (whatever that is), is that it's /
post/ modernism. It takes what it likes from Modernism and uses it
where appropriate.

S.

On 9 Apr 2006, at 12:48, Edward Summers wrote:
> On Apr 7, 2006, at 5:15 AM, Nat Pryce wrote:
>> The happiest valediction on the V&A show is that at least peoples
>> across Europe rejected all it celebrates. They denied modernism's
>> odious utopianism. They refused to live as they were ordered. They
>> hated glass buildings. They did not buy abstract art or listen to
>> musique concrète. They refused to do mass callisthenics. They turned
>> their back on "less is more" in favour of a humane environment and
>> courtesy towards the past. They are doing so to this day. But
>> think of
>> the damage that was done.
>
> What a lovely phrase 'odious utopianisms'--thanks for posting [1]. I
> have to admit I do have a soft spot for Mondrian :-)
>
> The review definitely got my mind working on what the 'odious
> utopianisms' of computer programming are today. It often feels like
> computer language advocacy in general comes bundled with the language
> of utopia--or of distopia when speaking of 'other languages'.
>
> I'm kind of curious to hear what other folks find to be todays odious
> computing utopianisms.

--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Edward Summers <ehs@...>
wrote:
>
> On Apr 7, 2006, at 5:15 AM, Nat Pryce wrote:
> > The happiest valediction on the V&A show is that at least peoples
> > across Europe rejected all it celebrates. They denied modernism's
> > odious utopianism.
>
> What a lovely phrase 'odious utopianisms'
>
> The review definitely got my mind working on what the 'odious
> utopianisms' of computer programming are today.

Well now, on the one hand there's the reto-utopians: wild-eyed bearded
mystics offering to their neophites a glimps of the hidden mysteries
that powered the ineffable wonder of the blissful lost word now sunk
beneath the waves. Can be diffiult to understand, as they often talk
with a Lisp. Anything we have now they had then, only better. Plus a
bunch more stuff that we haven't reinvented yet. The Smalltalk tends
to be replaced with a chilly silence just after anyone asks them  what
exactly they have to show for their once mighty powers.

And on the other hand there are the bright young things: brains
pulsating all over the place, they took the ancient secrets, performed
upon them an inversion through the center of the universe (I said they
were bright) and now have worked out to the n-th degree the most
subtle and briliant provably correct answers to every
question---except the ones that enyone who works for a living is
asking. With these folks the chill silence replaces the HUGS just
after you ask quite what's going to happen to their grand new Schemes
after the Red Dressing-gown of Wisdom goes back to the hire shop.

Neither group worries me overly much.

No, the ones I fear are the sharp-suited, cold eyed ones. The
spiritual heirs to Frederick Taylor. The ones who offer to make my
office into a factory (for my own good, of course). Like some B-movie
creature from the depths they seem to have been defeated only to rise
again in some new and more hideous form. They lure innocent young
business folk into their lair with sweet promises of "productivity",
only to suck them dry of cash, meanwhile their wizards press the life
out of captured programmers under the weight of huge boulders of XML.

They're the guys you have to worry about. The ones who woudl replace
creativity with meta-data. Who would turn master toolmakers into
fitters. Who want to make a better, faster, cheaper world and all you
have to do to get there is hand over your imagination.

On Apr 7, 2006, at 5:15 AM, Nat Pryce wrote:
> The happiest valediction on the V&A show is that at least peoples
> across Europe rejected all it celebrates. They denied modernism's
> odious utopianism. They refused to live as they were ordered. They
> hated glass buildings. They did not buy abstract art or listen to
> musique concrète. They refused to do mass callisthenics. They turned
> their back on "less is more" in favour of a humane environment and
> courtesy towards the past. They are doing so to this day. But think of
> the damage that was done.

What a lovely phrase 'odious utopianisms'--thanks for posting [1]. I
have to admit I do have a soft spot for Mondrian :-)

The review definitely got my mind working on what the 'odious
utopianisms' of computer programming are today. It often feels like
computer language advocacy in general comes bundled with the language
of utopia--or of distopia when speaking of 'other languages'.

I'm kind of curious to hear what other folks find to be todays odious
computing utopianisms.

//Ed

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1748821,00.html

The V&A are currently running a huge exhibition on 20th century
Modernism.  Here's a review and opinion from the Gruaniad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1748821,00.html

The last paragraphs:

The happiest valediction on the V&A show is that at least peoples
across Europe rejected all it celebrates. They denied modernism's
odious utopianism. They refused to live as they were ordered. They
hated glass buildings. They did not buy abstract art or listen to
musique concrète. They refused to do mass callisthenics. They turned
their back on "less is more" in favour of a humane environment and
courtesy towards the past. They are doing so to this day. But think of
the damage that was done.

http://www.brainhz.com/underhanded/

Although very different from scrapheap challenge, I like the
'deliberately using things in ways they shouldn't be' angle.

   -- Andrew

--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Michael Feathers
<mfeathers@...> wrote:
>
>
> I've been flipping through Eric Raymond's 'Art of Unix Programming'
> again, and it is neat to see what is the same and what is different
> compared to notions of good design that have developed in OO
communities.

Another technical community (with a hefty Modernist bias) has been
musing on the Unix way, too. See http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1210

Keith

That reminds me of the concept of the "mythos" in Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance.  My understanding of it was that the mythos is
the unspoken rules and understanding of reality that emerge within a
society.  There is peer pressure to act according to that view of
reality even when it doesn't make sense and those who do not are
considered insane.

It also reminds me of stories from Collapse by Jared Diamond (a great
book, btw). For example, the Norse society in Greenland collapsed
because they stuck to Northern European cultural norms even when
living in the arctic, and as a result starved to death while living
next to the Inuit who's lifestyle was adapted to life in that
environment.  We can be thankful that enterprise IT isn't that harsh!

--Nat.

On 2/2/06, Michael Feathers <mfeathers@...> wrote:
>
>
> Keith Braithwaite wrote:
>
> >
> >But there's still good stuff out there and pretty much universally
> >it's made be people who actually understand what they are doing and
> >have a high level of skill as well as being talented and inventive.
> >And still they can combine and create in was that remain surprising
> >(and would horrify a Modernist of 90 years ago).
> >
> >So, is there a route to being po-mo that dosn't involve understanding
> >pointers first but still leaves you competent?
> >
> >
> I think there is.  The thing that I take away from the
> Modernism/Post-modernism dichotomy is the issue of "grand narratives."
> I've always been troubled by the fact that people don't do what they say
> or say what they do.. the fact that software development is a messy
> process and there are people who wish that it was clean.  In fact, for
> some developers, messiness could be staring them in the face and they
> simply don't recognize it.  Ask them about their history as developers
> and they come up with example after example of experiences discordant
> with their current beliefs or view of the way that software should be
> developed, yet they themselves may not even notice the discord.  I'm
> very interested in this process: how we trick ourselves with the stories
> we tell ourselves.
>
> Things I've read about pomo leave me with the impression that (in most
> of its guises) it is largely a rebellion against a teleological view of
> rationality (I'm not sure if I'm using 'teleological' correctly here).
> So, people feel the rules are confining, so they make up their own rules
> and it's a big party, but if you try to map it all back to what people
> really know, everyone gets nervous.  I guess it makes sense as a
> reaction to most of what happened in the early to middle 20th century.
>
> For me, the struggle is to get people to see what they really do and
> where their stories are stifling.. but people have preconceived ideas
> about the way things should be.  You can show them another way of
> looking at things, and a third, but it's hard for many people to handle
> that many and often they are lost in the wilderness when their original
> way was found lacking
>
> (done rambling)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Keith Braithwaite wrote:

>
>But there's still good stuff out there and pretty much universally
>it's made be people who actually understand what they are doing and
>have a high level of skill as well as being talented and inventive.
>And still they can combine and create in was that remain surprising
>(and would horrify a Modernist of 90 years ago).
>
>So, is there a route to being po-mo that dosn't involve understanding
>pointers first but still leaves you competent?
>
>
I think there is.  The thing that I take away from the
Modernism/Post-modernism dichotomy is the issue of "grand narratives."
I've always been troubled by the fact that people don't do what they say
or say what they do.. the fact that software development is a messy
process and there are people who wish that it was clean.  In fact, for
some developers, messiness could be staring them in the face and they
simply don't recognize it.  Ask them about their history as developers
and they come up with example after example of experiences discordant
with their current beliefs or view of the way that software should be
developed, yet they themselves may not even notice the discord.  I'm
very interested in this process: how we trick ourselves with the stories
we tell ourselves.

Things I've read about pomo leave me with the impression that (in most
of its guises) it is largely a rebellion against a teleological view of
rationality (I'm not sure if I'm using 'teleological' correctly here).
So, people feel the rules are confining, so they make up their own rules
and it's a big party, but if you try to map it all back to what people
really know, everyone gets nervous.  I guess it makes sense as a
reaction to most of what happened in the early to middle 20th century.

For me, the struggle is to get people to see what they really do and
where their stories are stifling.. but people have preconceived ideas
about the way things should be.  You can show them another way of
looking at things, and a third, but it's hard for many people to handle
that many and often they are lost in the wilderness when their original
way was found lacking

(done rambling)

--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Freeman
<steve@m...> wrote:
>
> On 1 Feb 2006, at 10:34, Keith Braithwaite wrote:
> > fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
> > about learning a language like a post-modernist?
>
> The way most people do... Skim through enough of the book/tutorial to
> figure out the basics of the syntax and to get something to run. Then
> copy and paste an example from the web/MSDN that mostly does what you
> need. Rinse and repeat.
>
> Now I think of it, the great enabler of this approach is not having
> pointers. As Joel Spolsky points out, there's a real divide between
> those who can handle malloc and those who can't. Are we all VB
> programmers now?
Ah, now there's a can of worms. See, I can handle malloc. I can even
handle platforms where you have to manually manage storage on the
_stack_, never mind the heap. I know you can handle malloc. And
Michael. I'll bet that everyone who posts on this group can handle malloc.

Is this perhaps part of what lets us get away with being post-modern?

See, in the poetry world right now there's a little bit of a revival
of prosody going on. As an intro there's Stephen Fry with "The Ode
Less Travelled", and once you've got the hang of that, there's James
Fenton's "The Strength of Poetry" and so on. A growing number of folks
are thinking again that maybe it would be a good idea if someone who
wants to call themsleves a poet understood something about
scansion and rhyme, how they work, what they're for, what effects they
have and when to (and not) use them. This is a reaction to the school
of poetry writing that allows one to get away with
putting some
words
of
a sentence on dif-
-ferent lines all chopped up and some very long and some very
short
throw in some ;siudhfq9823y"£$%4-982-=82"£%$=24387wepsdnf
print it sideways, call it a poem and who's to say otherwise?

And that came, as far as I can tell, from a misunderstanding of
postmodernism. The modernists understood the old rules and made up new
ones to replace them (and were every bit as scandalous as any
contemporary artist today in doing so), the first most-podernists
understood the old rules and the new modern rules and made their own
new rules on the fly and chose between the three of them as they
whished. The "folk post-modernists" as we might call them observed
that the resulting material seemed not to have had any rules appled
unless you looked quite carefully, didn't bother to do that and then
inferred that therefore no rules needed to be understood and had a
field day.

Some folks I know sometimes get themsleves a cheap holiday by signing
up for the "artist in residence" scheme at a hotel in Cornwall. Anyone
can do this: as far as the hotel is concerned if you call yourself an
artist, you are one. After all, who's to say what's good or bad,
right? It's all subjective...well the folks I know don't just call
themselves artists they are, and they can tell, and they report that
the hotel is crammed with really, really shockingly bad "art".

Throw that hotel's management's attitude into the mix and many
branches of the arts have ended up in a sorry state of randomised
mediocrity.

But there's still good stuff out there and pretty much universally
it's made be people who actually understand what they are doing and
have a high level of skill as well as being talented and inventive.
And still they can combine and create in was that remain surprising
(and would horrify a Modernist of 90 years ago).

So, is there a route to being po-mo that dosn't involve understanding
pointers first but still leaves you competent?

Keith

A modernist retort for those who haven't seen it yet:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html

Stephen Freeman wrote:

>I think you might be onto something. I hadn't realise how subtle MS
>have been to use Pathology as an educational technique.
>
>Pathology (from Greek pathos, feeling, pain, suffering; and logos,
>study of; see also -ology) is the study of the processes underlying
>disease and other forms of illness, harmful abnormality, or dysfunction.
>
>Yes, it all fits!
>
>S.
>
>On 1 Feb 2006, at 12:07, nat_pryce wrote:
>
>
>>--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Freeman
>><steve@m...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 1 Feb 2006, at 10:34, Keith Braithwaite wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
>>>>about learning a language like a post-modernist?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>The way most people do... Skim through enough of the book/tutorial to
>>>figure out the basics of the syntax and to get something to run. Then
>>>copy and paste an example from the web/MSDN that mostly does what you
>>>need. Rinse and repeat.
>>>
>>>
>>And don't underestimate the utility of refactoring tools in helping
>>people learn from examples.
>>
>>I used to hate the Microsoft example code found in MSDN and the SDKs.
>> It's all poorly written. Most of it serves to hide the point of the
>>specific example. The MSDN is a virtual textbook in how *not* to
>>program.
>>
>>But I now realise that I had completely missed the point of those
>>examples.
>>
>>When armed with ReSharper, Microsoft's example code is a fantastic way
>>to learn.  Start with something virtually unintelligable and then
>>refactor your way to clarity.  Rename variables to discover intent,
>>delete unnecessary code, pull out methods and classes to describe what
>>you learn as you decipher the code.
>>
>>In the end you have a much deeper understanding of the API in question
>>and a clear expression of your understanding in code.
>>
>>What I find surprising is that Microsoft's MSDN team invented a method
>>of teaching that relies upon tools that Microsoft themselves are
>>unable to implement.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I think you might be onto something. I hadn't realise how subtle MS
have been to use Pathology as an educational technique.

Pathology (from Greek pathos, feeling, pain, suffering; and logos,
study of; see also -ology) is the study of the processes underlying
disease and other forms of illness, harmful abnormality, or dysfunction.

Yes, it all fits!

S.

On 1 Feb 2006, at 12:07, nat_pryce wrote:
> --- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Freeman
> <steve@m...> wrote:
>>
>> On 1 Feb 2006, at 10:34, Keith Braithwaite wrote:
>>> fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
>>> about learning a language like a post-modernist?
>>
>> The way most people do... Skim through enough of the book/tutorial to
>> figure out the basics of the syntax and to get something to run. Then
>> copy and paste an example from the web/MSDN that mostly does what you
>> need. Rinse and repeat.
>
> And don't underestimate the utility of refactoring tools in helping
> people learn from examples.
>
> I used to hate the Microsoft example code found in MSDN and the SDKs.
>  It's all poorly written. Most of it serves to hide the point of the
> specific example. The MSDN is a virtual textbook in how *not* to
> program.
>
> But I now realise that I had completely missed the point of those
> examples.
>
> When armed with ReSharper, Microsoft's example code is a fantastic way
> to learn.  Start with something virtually unintelligable and then
> refactor your way to clarity.  Rename variables to discover intent,
> delete unnecessary code, pull out methods and classes to describe what
> you learn as you decipher the code.
>
> In the end you have a much deeper understanding of the API in question
> and a clear expression of your understanding in code.
>
> What I find surprising is that Microsoft's MSDN team invented a method
> of teaching that relies upon tools that Microsoft themselves are
> unable to implement.
>

--- In postmodernprogramming@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Freeman
<steve@m...> wrote:
>
> On 1 Feb 2006, at 10:34, Keith Braithwaite wrote:
> > fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
> > about learning a language like a post-modernist?
>
> The way most people do... Skim through enough of the book/tutorial to
> figure out the basics of the syntax and to get something to run. Then
> copy and paste an example from the web/MSDN that mostly does what you
> need. Rinse and repeat.

And don't underestimate the utility of refactoring tools in helping
people learn from examples.

I used to hate the Microsoft example code found in MSDN and the SDKs.
  It's all poorly written. Most of it serves to hide the point of the
specific example. The MSDN is a virtual textbook in how *not* to program.

But I now realise that I had completely missed the point of those
examples.

When armed with ReSharper, Microsoft's example code is a fantastic way
to learn.  Start with something virtually unintelligable and then
refactor your way to clarity.  Rename variables to discover intent,
delete unnecessary code, pull out methods and classes to describe what
you learn as you decipher the code.

In the end you have a much deeper understanding of the API in question
and a clear expression of your understanding in code.

What I find surprising is that Microsoft's MSDN team invented a method
of teaching that relies upon tools that Microsoft themselves are
unable to implement.

On 1 Feb 2006, at 10:34, Keith Braithwaite wrote:
> fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
> about learning a language like a post-modernist?

The way most people do... Skim through enough of the book/tutorial to
figure out the basics of the syntax and to get something to run. Then
copy and paste an example from the web/MSDN that mostly does what you
need. Rinse and repeat.

Now I think of it, the great enabler of this approach is not having
pointers. As Joel Spolsky points out, there's a real divide between
those who can handle malloc and those who can't. Are we all VB
programmers now?

S.

This caught my eye on reddit:
http://epsilondelta.wordpress.com/2006/01/31/programming-like-a-mathematician-ii\
-learning-new-languages/

My antennae began to twitch at the point were Dziuba distinguishes the
programmer who _understands_ Java who will think thoughts like "Hmm,
network programming. This feels awful similar to file I/O. I bet they
use the same basic structure. I'll have a look at the docs" from the
one who, as he puts it, simply _knows_ Java who will "fire up IE, type
in www.google.com and search for java network programming". I'm pretty
sure that I'd do the second approach first and the first approach
second and I'm not sure I know why that would be bad. In fact, I just
did google for java network programming and the first hit is a
fantastically useful FAQ.

The programmer who understands a language, in Dziuba's model, grasps
the "fundamental tenet" of the language (by analogy with the various
Fundamental Theorems of this and that in maths) and has trained
themselves in how that tenet conditions solutions in that language and
is able to "understand the fundamentals to a point where [they] can
build upon them in the simplest way to get the most efficient answer
to the question at hand". Furthermore, the _effective_ programmer can
"for any given problem [...] mentally visualize and express in code,
the shortest path to solution". A voice in my head appends "in one
step" to the end of that, but I'm not 100% sure thats the intent.

Anyway, I suppose that people who can do this must exist but I don't
think I've met one in ten years of commerical programming. On the
other hand I have met a number of people who's productivity in that
setting is quite low because they insist on fathoming out the
uttermost details and nethermost implications of the implementation of
BufferedInputStream before making any use of it.

Learning a programming language the way a mathematician learns a new
branch of the subject (although I don't quite believe that they do
this the way Dziuba seems to suggest) doesn't seem like such a
fantastic notion to me. Which raises the question: how would you go
about learning a language like a post-modernist?

Keith

Using technology for the sake of it is a universal failing, but the
idea that there should be a Universal reuse library is certainly
modernist. And I guess the idea that it needs to be automated in a
"clean" mechanical way is modernist.

S.

On 30 Jan 2006, at 01:02, Michael Feathers wrote:
> Yeah... it's funny.. with these sorts of silliness, I don't know
> whether
> tying them to modermism is "right."  It feels right in a way but it
> also
> feels off.
>
> Nat Pryce wrote:
>
>> At least they wanted make a tool to help share code.  I've seen
>> projects with a "reuse" charter burn six figure sums writing
>> frameworks from scratch that don't meet anybody's needs -- because
>> the
>> reuse team never spoke to the end-users (development teams).
>>
>> --Nat.
>>
>> On 1/25/06, Michael Feathers <mfeathers@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I haven't run across it, but it makes sense.  I'll never forget
>>> the time
>>> I went to company wide meeting of geeks with my boss (I was a junior
>>> programmer at the time) and we sat through a hour of plans to make a
>>> reuse library for the company I was at.  What was the first
>>> task?  Make
>>> an application to manage the reuse library, of course.  This was all
>>> pre-web but it was just silly.  Walking back I told my boss that we
>>> should've just designated someone to be the librarian, written up
>>> some
>>> summaries, and let the librarian keep track of the summaries.
>>> But no,
>>> we were programmers, we had to code something... but we never
>>> did.  I've
>>> seen the same sort of scenario repeat itself at many companies.
>>> We're
>>> programmers and we have a big hammer.  We'll make something shiny
>>> and
>>> new.  Why a program?  Because we're programmers.