For some reason, this approach makes me think of the difference between “wizardry” and “sorcery” in some fantasy magic systems. The magic of “wizards” is fundamentally based on a deep study and understanding of arcane things, perhaps assisted by some (necessary or helpful) tools of great power. “Sorcerers” summon supernatural beings and are able to control them, cajole them, and protect themselves and others against them (with more or less success)... but the actual desired magical effect is performed by those beings.
Computing has historically been a field of wizardry. It's... interesting (?) to see so many people pushing so hard in the direction of sorcery, and in fact applying that sorcery to other fields, in which they themselves aren't quite able to validate whether the spell worked or not.
> Computing has historically been a field of wizardry.
Counter argument, "historically" is not last year but closer to 2 decades ago.
modern computing has sat atop a mountain of sorcery for ages. You may be able to squint and call a good compiler a "tool of power" more than sorcery but there are plenty of other tech stacks that simply sit upon one opaque box after another.
And it's not unusual for sorcery to produce crap, even if it's production worth crap. Dreamweaver had a WYSIWYG editor ages ago and as someone who was hand crafting HTML in that era it's code was typically a mess.
Now that's the norm, almost nobody makes HTML by hand, some js framework does. And it's often shit, I've seen entire sources of nothing but <div> nested ad-nauseam, conjured up from the depths of "I-don't-care-as-long-as-it-works"
gbjcantab · · focus · HN ↗
Computing has historically been a field of wizardry. It's... interesting (?) to see so many people pushing so hard in the direction of sorcery, and in fact applying that sorcery to other fields, in which they themselves aren't quite able to validate whether the spell worked or not.
ticulatedspline · · focus · HN ↗
Counter argument, "historically" is not last year but closer to 2 decades ago.
modern computing has sat atop a mountain of sorcery for ages. You may be able to squint and call a good compiler a "tool of power" more than sorcery but there are plenty of other tech stacks that simply sit upon one opaque box after another.
And it's not unusual for sorcery to produce crap, even if it's production worth crap. Dreamweaver had a WYSIWYG editor ages ago and as someone who was hand crafting HTML in that era it's code was typically a mess.
Now that's the norm, almost nobody makes HTML by hand, some js framework does. And it's often shit, I've seen entire sources of nothing but <div> nested ad-nauseam, conjured up from the depths of "I-don't-care-as-long-as-it-works"