On Sun, 15 Jul 2012, Ivan Zhao wrote: > By "Victorian plumbing", I meant the standardization of the plumbing and > hardware components at the end of the 19th century. It greatly liberated > plumbers from fixing each broken toilet from scratch, to simply picking and > assembling off the shelf pieces. > > So far, the discussion has mostly being about "how to" fix the current > situation. They are great, but I am more interesting in the "historical > precedences" that we could use as lessons and analogies. For example, in > the plumber case, the lesson could be that standardization of the parts > abstract away the need to know to forge a facet, so my mother, probably not > a technical person in any century, could go to a hardware store and fix the > problem herself.
There was (or even still is) a proposition to make software from prefabricated components. Not much different to another proposition about using prefabricated libraries/dlls etc. Anyway, seems like there is a lot of component schools nowadays, and I guess they are unable to work with each other - unless you use a lot of chewing gum and duct tape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component-based_software_engineering I guess the only real analogy to your mother doing her own repairs by herself would require some standarization body, like ANSI or ECMA, and the rest of interested parties to obey. Now, the truth is parties will obey when they have money to be gambled from obedience. BTW, I think much better analogy would be to compare software with electronics. There are some common elements, sure, but how they are aligned and linked matters a lot. Even when there are common structural meta-elements like voltage regulators, they are not necessarilly interchangeable. And so far, I cannot see a total amateur repairing her own TV or radio. Oh, wait, back when there were lamps in TV sets, I did some monkey-type repairs :-). Also, I guess this approach to programming when one connects stuff built by others can be both good and disastrous, this blog entry gives me a clue: Complexity - or how hard is it to display a list of 3,000 items in a table on MacOS X anyway? http://chaosinmotion.com/blog/?p=620 (And we get this results from programmers who should know something about their craft, yet sorting/browsing few thousand items is too hard and requires upgrade from a supercomputer - truly a prelude to pitiful disaster). So far, it looks that IT is still in it's inflation stage and everybody is trying to bite into everybody's else share. Any kind of stability-oriented thinking is not scheduled for this year or this decade, IMHO. Even if inflation is slowing or stopping, it will take years for everybody to realize this and start playing differently. While I never researched this, I am sure in the early days of hydraulic/plumbing business, there were many shops which only agreed on common elements much later. And the same was with competing solutions for city lights 110+ years ago. And the same is still happening in auto industry, where the only really standardized elements are gasoline and lead-acid battery, AFAIK. > Also, by "programming", I did not meant text, visual, or any other forms of > computer programming per say, but rather an "attitude" towards the > computing medium in general -- to less of a passive button pusher, more a > deliberate assembler and manipulator. > > Ivan There are some efforts like Scratch or Squeak-based eToys. They are interesting from my point of view, not sure how they fit into this "attitude" thing. I'd say, we now have quite a few devices programmable - microwave owens, video casette recorders (and their dvd/br offsprings), automated washing machines, robot vacuum cleaners. So the idea is not so alien to common folk, I guess. This is, however, still only about pushing predefined buttons. To make large scale change into humanity able to create their own buttons like I nowadays write a two line bash script, just to save me a need to type those two lines every day, I really don't know if this is possible. Like I already have said, whoever wanted to play with computer as programmable device, could have a lot of options and I don't think there is really a need to make it even easier. Visual programming looks cool on a surface, but I doubt it really gives any freedom. Departing from land of "program=text" idea may lead you into land of "write a book by choosing from a table with 1000 predefined pictures". Apart from experimental poetry, I wouldn't find such books very interesting or worth my time. If there is any other hint, it's maybe about programmable calculators. Some time ago, they looked like a killer app - at least for me. Nowadays, it is a bit hard to spot them on one popular Polish auctioning site. There are cheap engineers/scientific calculators for literally few bucks, but no programmables. One could argue, this is because with the advent of cell phones they are capable of becoming a programmable themselves. So, is it really the case - I don't think so (not on a wider scale, because there are, of course, some people pursuing it). So, the idea of programming is well rooted into people minds. And there are tools for everybody willing to try it with their computer. But all this does not lead to more programmers. Repeating myself is not going to change anything either. I hope I understood you better this time :-) and my answer made some sense. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
