On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:54:53PM +0100, evan.raskob [lists] wrote:
> Yeah, my argument is pretty weak here, but I can only speak from
> experience (my own, and others') programming Max, that is just *feels*
> different. Wishy-washy, yes, but sometimes you have to trust your
> feelings. I'd love to see some sort of study about this, though.
I think that's really important. Maybe the most important thing about all of
this. Patching might be functionally identical to coding (although there are
things you can do with code that are very difficult to do with patches), but I
think there is still an emotional difference between programming and patching.
Not better or worse, but as you say it just feels different.
Why is that remotely important? Computing systems are made by humans for
humans, and humans are naturally emotional entities. Rather than being
separate, cognitive and neuro science make it clear that emotion is key to how
we process information rationally.
Don Norman (Computer Science + Cognitive Science professor!) talks about human
centered design, and how if you design things to be aesthetically pleasing then
they actually become technically easier to use and you make less mistakes using
them. I think this is true of programming languages. I definitely get different
"programming feelings" from Scheme's braces vs. Python's sparseness and
whitespace vs. C's tightly wound semicolon fetishism.
Wow, programming feelings, well I've definitely established myself as the
wussiest person on this mailing list now, I think.
Chris "FORTRAN hurts my feelings" M.
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Received on Fri Oct 16 2009 - 21:51:59 BST