

Why programming languages? - kapilkaisare
http://blog.cdleary.com/2010/10/why-programming-languages/

======
sz
Less ridiculous and more persuasive:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c>

------
wccrawford
Do people read programming books to find reasons to become interested in
programming? Seems to me, once they've picked up a book, they're already
interested. "Preaching to the choir" seems like an apt phrase at this point.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Ask a publisher - I'm just someone who reads the occasional publisher's blog -
but the answer is "yes". Browsers will pick up a book and scan the cover, the
preface, the first chapter, etc. to decide whether your book is worth reading,
and therefore worth buying.

And, yes, even literate people who know nothing about a field will pick up
books and try them to see if they are inspired to learn more. People who
aren't linguists try _The Language Instinct_ ; people who aren't physicists
pick up Hawking or the popular lectures of Richard Feynman; lots and _lots_ of
non-historians read popular histories (think: Stephen Ambrose); and I wouldn't
be where I am today if it weren't for writers like Martin Gardner who labored
to translate mathematics for young, unspecialist audiences.

And then we have programming. Friends and relatives of mine who have never
programmed ask me for a book that will tell them what programming is about so
that they can see if they are interested, and I never know what to say. The
best preface I know is in SICP, but that's like handing _The Feynman Lectures
on Physics_ to someone who wants to know how their car works. The first few
pages are great but then it gets _scary hard_.

This stuff is important. I read a lot of books on BASIC and Pascal and
assembly programming when I was a kid, but I never really found anything that
put programming into perspective. Math and science had a grand, sweeping
narrative that was apparent even to a kid, but programming seemed to be about
making boxes blink. And this is still how it is in the popular imagination,
even for adults. Tell people you're a mathematician or a physicist and they'll
think you're a genius; tell them you're a programmer and they'll ask how
worried you are that your job will be outsourced to faraway countries.

~~~
sprout
Why not _why?

------
j_baker
"I am totally taken aback by the lack of hyperbolic romanticism in the
foreword of the programming language book that I just got."

I don't know why, but I _really_ like this statement.

------
chc
Programming books are by and large read by programmers. Complaining that the
foreword doesn't sell programming well enough is like complaining that
Hawking's papers don't contain enough cheerleading for first-grade science
students.

~~~
j_baker
The author wasn't complaining about not selling programming. He was
complaining about not selling _languages_.

