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> programming is a medium through which incomplete understanding can be refined, and eventually expressed.

Which, by all forms of understanding I possess, is a benefit or beneficial to the users of programming. Ergo, a good medium.

If the title were "Programming as a potential medium for expressing/refining not yet well-formed ideas", then there'd be no value judgment at all (and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation). But as it is, the title uses "poorly understood, sloppily-formulated ideas" which automatically puts a negative spin, which is in a way counter-acted in the original paper by "good medium", implying that the paper isn't actually about bad ideas and how they're propagated through code.




This was my thought as well. I don't understand the objection to value judgements above.




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