jonathanedwards

Keep working on your ideas and try to communicate them to others. If we all refuse to give up someday we will make programming not suck.

Unfortunately still just a half-baked experiment, but I really hope the next version under development will be complete enough to share.

Real soon now...

Seriously, thanks for the encouragement. I'm really hoping the latest version will be good enough to share at long last.

Let's put our money where our mouth is. I believe it is legal in the US to hire only people over 40. GeezerSoft - "because old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance"

Yeah big time. Not that it's ever easy for smart asocial people, but being four years younger than everyone else made it way worse for me. Some people managed a lot better though, especially if they could pass for older.

They called it "radical acceleration", but they don't do it anymore. There were some mixed outcomes, like mine. These days it would be considered unethical experimentation on human subjects.

I was "student one". AMA. I dislike that the title of this article conflates intelligence and genius. Genius is impact, not talent. The one thing I've learned is that intelligence is highly overrated. Especially in the thing I know the most about: programming.

Most notable for me is when I go out to a restaurant in Manhattan I see many tables full of grown ups and seniors having lively discussions. In SF it's like that Star Trek episode where a virus kills off all the adults and leaves only children.

Wow, these comments mentions lots of work I wasn't aware of! We've been building a community of people working in this area: the Future Programming Workshop. http://www.future-programming.org/ We will all do better if we get together to exchange ideas and criticism. Suggestions for improving FPW are welcome.

As will Eve!

I've observed a definite correlation that people who like Hicky's simple/easy framework don't agree with mine. Personally I don't find it useful because it tries to separate knowing from doing.

I also seem to disagree with people who emphasize "expressiveness, flexibility, and power". I think they are mostly a selection effect: talented programmers tend to be attracted to those features, especially when they are young and haven't yet been burned by them too often.

With such fundamental differences we can probably only agree to disagree.

Speaking of giving credit and new ideas, see this 20 year old work: http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/ZStep/ZStep.html

OK, you don't need to convince me! I've been saying for years that the central problem is coordinating state updates, and have been proposing that languages should automatically manage time for us like the way they automatically manage memory. Sean McDirmid and I have submitted a paper on it to Onward.

But as to graphs vs trees I don't think it is so clear-cut. Good arguments on both sides of that issue.

Here's some meat. So how does FP fall down?

Ironic that the author decries the hacker cult of cleverness by posting a clever satire.

After Android, iPhone 4s just LOOKS wrong.

I am switching back from 4s to Android because I find Safari unreadable with my old eyes. No control over font sizes, and the double-tap zoom doesn't reflow text. So HN is completely unreadable in portrait, and only barely so in landscape. No problem on my DroidX.