Re: Question for computer programmers
Well, I am no coder, as my friend jokingly told me "You couldn't even write a Hello World script without copy/paste..." But as little meaning as he wanted to give to those words, he actually does speak the truth. But, I think the advice in post 2 is very helpful. While I don't program, I do other things which can, to a certain degree, be approached with a programmer's mind set. An example of this is MML, which is a simple music notation language. I'm known to do interesting things with it, such as trying to emulate difficult to play passages, which are about 500 times more difficult to type and play correctly. While a lot of my mml code does look a little jibberish to me sometimes, I can piece it together, and if the thing refuses to compile into something that can be played, or if it plays and sounds wrong, I can normally step through the mml script and find the problem, not by trial and error but by looking at what I've typed and seeing the err
or. With MML though it's a lot simpler, it's more meant for musical/math geeks like myself. So it's just a simple matter of knowing what each command does and being able to add their effects up in your head.
A programming language is much different. In MML I don't have to step back and piece together how I've constructed an array or a function, or how I've set an object's properties, and then figure out how that led to the result I'm getting. That kind of stuff makes my head hurt. I've tried to grasp BGT. I really tried. And because my brain doesn't work the way BGT does, I end up tying it in hopelessly tangled knots. No doubt I could untangle them given time, patience, and a mentor who could see me through. That same friend who joked about my inability to write Hello World also told me that if I did grasp BGT or a similar language, he would not be surprised if I did great things with it which nobody else had thought of yet. But
I'm not there yet, and I suspect I won't be for a long time.
Even though I am not a coder, I can tell you this much. No matter the system or method for inputting the iisntructions, whether it's mml, bgt, Python, or even sitting in front of an editor that doesn't have scripting of any kind, the process should be similar. You have to know what you're trying to do and how you're going to do it before you start typing. That doesn't mean you must have the whole program code scripted in your head, but it is never a good idea to push yourself too hard too soon. This only leads to discouragement. Remember, a programming language is a language. You can't always take it in chunks or sentences. It's the same with writing novels. Not only do authors understand the sentences they write in their novels, but they choose the words they use based on impact, on context, and on language structure. Nothing they write is written just because... or at le
ast it shouldn't be. Coding should be the same way. You write commands with an understanding of what they all do. Perhaps the simplicity of MML commands is why I grasp it so well. Those commands do one thing which for the most part is immediately obvious, and they are read left to right, top to bottom. If there is a problem, I'll be sure to notice it by just listening to the output. But a programming language puts meanings to those words, meanings that only make sense if you understand the linguistic structure. They are not immediately obvious unless you have context within the language which defines them. Furthermore programs have layers of functions, objects, arrays, variables and so forth, which require a lot of backtracking. Kind of liking through written paragraphs and stepping through the he's, she's, I's, you's, them's, they's, and stuff like that to find the path that leads to real meaning and context. , Thus, trial and error is not re
ally a good strategy to determine problems, unless you have narrowed your possible problems down to a few suspects. Even then, it is not bad practice to figure out why option A works and option B doesn't.
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