On 12/12/06, Patrick Mulder
Not sure whether this is the right place to discuss computers and programming in general:
You're implying that there's a *more* appropriate forum somewhere for discussing analogies between music composition and programming languages? If so, I'd like to know what it is!
But Dijkstra's metaphor is suggesting, that while Beethoven learned by experiment and debugging compositions, Mozart did not have a need for reflection while writing down music ?
I've been thinking about this. Are there really any programmers who are like Mozart in the way you describe? Donald Knuth might be one, or at least, he wrote that he wrote and debugged all of TeX on paper before entering it into a computer and "only found 13 more bugs" (or something like that), once he did. I don't remember if it was 13 exactly, but "13 more bugs" might be the closest that any programmer gets to Mozart, or at least any programmer in the 20th or early 21st century. But, can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night, sitting down, and writing a compiler from start to finish? Well, of course, easily, undergrads do it all the time during finals period. But, one that works, and that contains original ideas? I know some awesome programmers, but I don't think any of them are quite that awesome. Whereas it's conceivable to imagine somebody writing a piece of music that way, or a poem. Does that just mean that computer science has a long way to go in maturation? Or does it mean something else?
PS I like the idea of a book "Hakell for Hackers"
Maybe "Haskell for People Who Want to Be Hackers"? (Since, of course, one should never apply the term "hacker" to oneself.) I'm not sure whether it's best to aim at people who might be already hackers who want to learn Haskell, or people who are already programmers who want to be Haskell hackers, in particular. I suppose that the first group of people is probably larger. Cheers, Kirsten -- Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier@alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt "What is research but a blind date with knowledge?" -- Will Henry