• meowmeowbeanz@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    36 minutes ago

    If programming languages are made for humans, then explain Assembly. Or better yet, try debugging a segfault in C at 3 AM and tell me that was designed with human comfort in mind.

    Sure, some languages pretend to be human-friendly (looking at you, Python), but then you hit regex or dependency hell, and suddenly it’s like deciphering alien hieroglyphs. Let’s not even start on Lisp—parentheses everywhere like it’s trying to smother you in syntax.

    No, programming languages aren’t made for humans—they’re made for machines, and we’re just the poor fools trying to survive the translation layer.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
    31·
    11 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.worldEnglish
    6·
    10 hours ago

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

    • Platypus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      3 hours ago

      Those are arguably the most “made for humans” languages—they’re made to make humans laugh and/or headbutt a railroad spike in frustration

  • snek_boi@lemmy.ml
    41·
    10 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.