• Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    3 hours ago

    The statement in this meme is false. There are many programming languages which can be written by humans but which are intended primarily to be generated by other programs (such as compilers for higher-level languages).

    The distinction can sometimes be missed even by people who are successfully writing code in these languages; this comment from Jeffrey Friedl (author of the book Mastering Regular Expressions) stuck with me:

    I’ve written full-fledged applications in PostScript – it can be done – but it’s important to remember that PostScript has been designed for machine-generated scripts. A human does not normally code in PostScript directly, but rather, they write a program in another language that produces PostScript to do what they want. (I realized this after having written said applications :-)) —Jeffrey

    (there is a lot of fascinating history in that thread on his blog…)

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 hours ago

    You should have tried programming a 68000 about 40 years ago. I dreamed in binary for the duration of that class.

  • snek_boi@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 hours ago

    Adding to what others in thread have said, there are languages that are more usable and are more user-centric. I’ll say something that’s a bit gross but makes the point clear: if you’re brave enough, anything can be a sex toy. Ergonomics matter.

  • Swedneck
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    4 hours ago

    some languages are however made to be anti-human, looking at you brainfuck and whitespace