
"But It Doesn't Mean Anything" – A demonstration of the value of computer code - inglesp
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/but-it-doesnt-mean-anything.html
======
chriswarbo
Paxman's point about code being 'meaningless' was to emphasise that the _end
goal_ of this initiative is stupid. It's not "learn to think analytically",
it's not "learn to express your ideas precisely", it's not "learn to instruct
a computer", it's not even "learn to use a computer", it's "learn to code".

Computers are clearly important, and Paxman would not deny it, but that
doesn't make school IT classes any less pointless. They are terrible because
they teach what buttons to click to make Microsoft Word 97 display text in
bold, rather than the ability to think about problems; arguably they teach
_against_ thinking about problems (like "how do I make text bold?"), in favour
of rote learning and hand-holding. Likewise, teaching kids which punctuation
marks to press in Notepad to make a HTML element turn green is also a terrible
idea, because it's focusing on the code. This is also the most common
complaint I've heard about undergraduate computer science courses (teaching
one particular language's syntax rather than how to solve problems).

I saw this summed up best on /.
[http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771525&cid=4...](http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771525&cid=46205325)

"The problem here is that "code" is being used as a synonym for "computer
magic"."

This captures the essence of this interview exactly. Paxman made a provocative
remark, and did Dexter argue against it? No, she agreed with him and said some
nonsense about code being for computers:

"It doesn't mean anything to you, or to me yet, but it's the set of
instructions that you type into a computer to get an output."

In other words "computer magic". What Dexter doesn't realise, probably because
she's not spent a significant amount of time programming, is that _code is for
people to understand_ and only incidentally for machines to execute. If
programming was only about satisfying the computer, our keyboards would only
have two big buttons: 0 and 1.

Now, this was essentially true in the early days of computing (punching cards)
but we've progressed beyond this. The reason we use code is to allow _people_
to discover, understand and build on _ideas_.

~~~
al2o3cr
"The reason we use code is to allow people to discover, understand and build
on ideas"

The reason we use WORDS is to do the same thing...

But somehow _nobody_ will ever insist that:

"Likewise, teaching kids which letters to press in Notepad to make a sentence
is also a terrible idea, because it's focusing on the characters."

or that teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar are "meaningless".

~~~
brudgers
spell eng

Punch You! Hey Sean

and granma

ain't meaningless but take a backseat to phonetics and typography, and
contemporary pedagogical practice in language arts emphasizes the act of
writing rather than compliance with standards from the Victorian age.

~~~
EliRivers
Sometimes we keep standards for a very long time because they're really
effective. Written English is one such example.

~~~
brudgers
Poiesis does not require standards. Shakespeare is from the age before
standardized English and "Poiesis" fails my browser's spell check. It's not
just e e cummings and Ginsberg's howlings.

The obsession over standardized spelling in particular is an accident of the
English language. There aren't spelling bees in German or French because
phonetics is the important point of reference in ordinary human language.

The standards of English language are useful but for matters of taste and
social differentiation not communication, e.g. the tenses of "read" which is
about as important as a word can get in the context of written communication.

~~~
MaysonL
There aren't spelling bees in France, but there are dictation competitions,
graded on spelling, punctuation, and accents [grave, acute, etc]. And the
French (at least the Academy) are notoriously sticklers for the purity of the
language.

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billyjobob
Paxman's whole shtick is that he argues with the people he interviews. Usually
it is quite effective, because mostly he interviews politicians who are full
of shit and he points it out in a way that more reverential interviewers
don't. However, he probably doesn't mean everything he says: he just takes a
contrarian view to whatever the interviewee says.

~~~
arthurjj
My issue is that if you're going to play devil's advocate then you should come
up with stronger arguments than "it doesn't mean anything". If there are
legitimate questions about the program that isn't one of them

~~~
icebraining
I don't think his job is just to argue against the theory; that remark - and
the fact that the interviewee was unable to confidently rebuke it - shows that
the people responsible for it are ill prepared, and _that_ is a good argument
against the practical implementation of the program.

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throwaway13qf85
I recently spoke to a guy who sells swaps for a major investment bank.

The basic idea is that he comes up with some trading strategy, and writes the
code that computes the profit/loss associated with that strategy if it was
executed at market fixing prices (typically the market open or close each
day).

The bank sells a total return swap on this strategy, which means that in
return for a fee from the client, they pay the client the stream of profits
(or losses) each month that would have resulted from trading this strategy.
Behind the scenes, the bank trades the strategy (or something like it) in
order to hedge the risk associated with the swap, so that they can earn the
fee approximately risk free.

There's an obvious problem with this, which is that the client basically has
to take the bank's word for what the profit/loss of the strategy is. To
counter that, the guy who came up with the strategy now has to write a 100+
page document in legalese, which outlines exactly how the profit/loss on the
strategy is calculated. This has to be sufficiently detailed that someone
couple re-implement the code themselves to check it. The guy I spoke to said
that this documentation takes up >50% of his time.

I'm sure everyone here will appreciate how incredible it is that a bank will
pay someone six figures every year to spend more than half their time writing
documentation that literally does nothing more than _reproduce a piece of
code_ , except about 50 times more verbosely.

 _Different symbols, but it doesn 't mean anything._

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ghswa
It's important to remember that the "year of code" initiative is _not_ related
to the new curriculum coming into force in September 2014. My wife is writing
a book for the new curriculum and, from what she's told me, it sounds quite
good.

At Key Stage 1 (ages 5 to 7) children are taught about algorithms, that they
are a way of breaking tasks into a sequence of steps that can be reused to
solve problems.

They will also be taught about the pervasiveness of software - about the
different kinds of devices and appliances that rely on software.

Finally, they will be taught about privacy. I'm not sure of the content but I
assume it'll be about managing information about themselves.

~~~
btilly
When good books written by knowledgeable and well-meaning subject specialists
are taught by teachers who do not and do not wish to understand the material,
the result is a predictable disaster. Doubly so since most teachers are not
particularly smart.

I know that sounds mean, but look at [http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-
estimates-by-intended-colle...](http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-
intended-college-major/) and notice how students going into education strongly
tend to have lower IQs than most college majors. Smarter than the average
adult, sure. But well below most people who get to college.

~~~
etler
I agree with you for a middle or high school level course, but I would hope a
teacher could wrap their heads around a 5-7 year old level explanation of
algorithms if they're capable of teaching math.

~~~
btilly
Based on informal asking, most teachers who are supposed to be teaching
fractions cannot figure out whether 2/3 is bigger than 3/5 or vice versa.

Given that fact, I am not optimistic about what you hope.

~~~
etler
If that's the case, I don't believe dumbing down the curriculum to the lowest
common denominator of teachers is the solution to the problem.

------
grannyg00se
So much of that is hard to watch.

Particularly the teaching of jQuery to people who are just starting out. And
the multiple assertions that one can "pick it up in a day", whether it be
programming or teaching skills.

Seems to be about throwing together a web page in a day rather than learning
to code.

And it seems the usefulness of computer programs doesn't extend beyond ecards,
web sites, and "apps".

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w_t_payne
"Code" is a horrible word.

I prefer "source documents", or, if pressed, "Formal descriptions of the
program".

Using the word "code" implies that the document is "encoded" somehow, which is
plainly undesirable and wrong.

With some notable (1) exceptions, the primary consumer of a "source document"
is a human being, not a machine.

The machine's purpose is to ensure the formal validity and correctness of the
document - but the majority of the informational content of the document
(variable names, structure, comments) is exclusively directed to human
developers.

We will never program in a "wild" natural language, but many programming
languages (2) make a deliberate effort to support expressions which simulate
or approximate natural language usage, albeit restricted to a particular
idiomatic form.

There will always be a tension between keeping a formal language simple enough
to reason about and permitting free, naturalistic expression - but this is the
same tension that makes poetry and haiku so appealing as an art form.

So many source documents appear to be "in code", not because this is a
necessary part of programming, but because it is very very difficult to write
things which combine sufficient simplicity for easy understanding, and the
correct representation of a difficult and complex problem. In most of these
cases, clear understanding is baffled not by the programming language, but by
the complexity of the real world.

The rigidly deterministic nature of the computer forces the programmer to deal
with a myriad of inconsistencies and complications that the non-programmer is
able to elide or gloss over with linguistic and social gymnastics. The
computer forces us to confront these complications, and to account for them.

In the same way that Mathematics isn't really about numbers, but about the
skill and craftsmanship of disciplined thought, programming isn't really about
computers, but about what happens when you can no longer ignore the details
within which the devil resides.

(1) Assembler & anything involving regular expressions. (2) Python

------
pessimizer
>What angers me here is Paxman's attempt to make a virtue of his own
ignorance.

It's important to be aggressively ignorant when interviewing people who are
making a case for something. It's a hand-waving and "common sense" repellant.

You can't just say that everyone should learn to code because coding is
important and everyone needs to know how to do it.

Other than the central argument, though, I actually love this post:) Paxman
shouldn't mind being made a strawman for a pretty exploration like this. More,
please.

------
vhold
This made me realize just how much the media's visual portrayal of computer
programming is a problem. When he said "It doesn't mean anything" he's
gesturing over to a stereotypical background image representation of code
which is all tilted, blurred, overlapping, clashing colors, etc. It's
purposefully skewed in every dimension to make it incomprehensible, and he
actually uses that as evidence about something.

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shizzy0
The interviewer is partly right, and students who have a natural aptitude[1]
for programming often recognize this: Code is meaningless. At the application
level, you may have something that looks like an image. Underneath, you may
represent it with numbers. Numbers, however, are also a fiction represented
with bits. The meaning is based entirely on one's interpretation. Creating a
mapping between meaningless formalism and meaningful interpretation is the
principle obstacle to learning to program.

I understand the point the author is trying to make, and the interviewer in
the video has not grasped the above. To answer his concern, ask him what
meaning does the letter 'd' have? Next to none, but in composition it can
provide quite a lot of meaning. (This is an argument from Hofstadter.)

[1]: I had a study/source for this, but I can't find it.

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chrismcb
So, they are teaching people to code, so they can make ecards? It is probably
much easier to use something already written to create an ecard... And that is
my whole point with this "learn to code." People think that everyone in the
future will need to know how to code. No, in the future it will be important
to know how to use the computer, but not everyone needs to know how to code.
Just like not everyone needs to know how to do everything else in the world.
You can teach people how use computers, without teaching them to program. And
teaching them to program won't necessarily teach them how to use computers.

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JoshuaRedmond
I don't think that Paxman's comment was as flippant as this article is making
out. If you watch the video, his comment follows Lottie Dexter vaguely waving
at the graphic of code behind him in desperate attempt to describe what code
actually is when she quite sure herself. What he sees is a blurry mess of code
pulled from who-knows-where that blatantly isn't of any use in it's current
form. I'm not trying to downplay some of the awesome things done with code in
the article, but I think the comment it's based on has been misunderstood.

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cLeEOGPw
Since the interview is seen by general population, he was just asking
questions that an average computer illiterate person would ask and at the same
time challenging and testing her on the subject.

~~~
pawn
Two of the most common questions I get asked when someone's curious about
coding are:

1\. So is it all just 1s and 0s?

2\. So do you know how to hack?

Sometimes I cynically answer the first question with "Yes, 1s and 0s all day.
Sometimes I don't even use 0s, just 1s" which I'm pretty sure I stole from a
Dilbert comic, but its funny seeing the expressions I get.

~~~
angersock
wait wait wait your company can afford ones?!

~~~
pawn
One of the few benefits to working for a larger company rather than a startup
- they can afford 1s and the more successful companies can afford 0s too!

~~~
angersock
Fucking Oracle...they'll let me use hex but it's a pretty hefty pricetag. >:(

------
jorgeleo
I found funny that she said "But it doesn't mean anything" when lots of artist
now days make a career out of using FFT in Autotune...

Did I say that out loud?

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pweissbrod
I recommend anyone who doesnt understand learning the fundamentals of writing
code read the book "player piano" by Kurt Vonnegut which depicts a dystopian
future where most human labor is replaced by machinery and software and
engineers and managers rule society.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_\(novel\))

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moron4hire
If the general populace doesn't need to learn about programming because it
won't mean anything to them, then the general populace really doesn't need to
study the vast majority of history that we're forced to sit through and
regurgitate in unimaginative fashion.

I, on the other, will sit on the side of the liberal arts and say that any and
all learning is worthwhile.

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lcfg
The "Russel Brand" link (just before the footnotes) is pointing to the wrong
url.

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jwmoz
Paxman is a twat.

