Comment by ForHackernews
11 years ago
Not just the right-brained. I want that as a professional software developer. I want a computer that will do what I thought, instead of what I foolishly typed.
Basically, I want a computer as smart as a good junior dev so I can just yell my brilliant ideas at it, and it will do the dirty work for me.
That's only because you think your thought exists and is correct. Programming forces you to confront the fact that it isn't, and that there are many aspects of it that you've overlooked.
So ve wants a computer that can ask for clarification and point out edge cases, like a good junior dev can.
Also one that can figure out the edge cases on its own, because fuck that shit... it's a really simple idea, why can't you make it work?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)
And, related...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(computer_science)
That's not exactly it though. The mistake is in thinking that your idea is detailed when it merely feels detailed.
Somewhat similarly, entheogens do not really give you profound ideas so much as the feeling that the ideas you are contemplating are profound.
This may be the reason, but doesn't have to be and often isn't. If you can explain your idea to another person, and know when they've executed it, why is that not evidence of your thought existing? Why is being able to translate your idea into the unnatural constraints of programming languages as they exist in 2015 the arbiter of correct thinking?
As someone who has worked with junior devs before, that sounds like an absolute nightmare.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with being junior. But the rate that requirements are misinterpreted even by intelligent humans is, I think, a fundamental reason why programming isn't doable by the masses yet.
It's not because computers are hard, it's because knowing what we actually specifically want them to do is.
I remember someone referring to this as "intent driven programming". I once worked for a company that made a business rules engine. The idea was to describe a flowchart to the system and the software would ask what you wanted to do at each step of the flowchart in a top down manner till you fleshed out the whole program ..
Top-down programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design - the Silver Bullet programming methodology of the 1970s.
Charles Simonyi attempted to design a company around this awhile ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming
That's likely AI-complete.