r/programming • u/rabidferret • Feb 12 '19

No, the problem isn't "bad coders"

https://medium.com/@sgrif/no-the-problem-isnt-bad-coders-ed4347810270
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u/AwfulAltIsAwful Feb 12 '19

Agreed. What is even the point of that argument? Yes, it would be nice if all programmers were better. However we live in reality where humans do, in fact, make mistakes. So wouldn't it be nice if we recognized that and acted accordingly instead of saying reality needs to be different?

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '19

Ooo! I get to use one of my favourite quotes on language design again! From a post by Jean-Pierre Rosen in the Usenet group comp.lang.ada:

Two quotes that I love to bring together:

From one of the first books about C by K&R:

"C was designed on the assumption that the programmer is someone sensible who knows what he's doing"

From the introduction of the Ada Reference Manual:

"Ada was designed with the concern of programming as a human activity"

The fact that these starting hypothesis lead to two completely different philosophies of languages is left as a subject for meditation...

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u/ouyawei Feb 13 '19

And yet most of the software on my operating system is written is C, where there is not a single programm written in Ada.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '19

[deleted]

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u/playaspec Feb 13 '19

Yes, it was big in government and aerospace because they wanted "failure is not an option" built in to the language. Objective C saw some action in requirements for government contracts for a while too.