If you don’t have a word for it, will the thought ever enter your mind?
June 19, 2011 Leave a Comment
I had written about how we are short-changing our future by overemphasizing local languages over English in education (here). A similar subject came up yesterday at PPR Redux while we were discussing the IBM iSeries. “What’s that got to do with language?” you might say. Well, read on.
I’ve seen the tendency among programmers to focus too much on the tool rather than the problem. This often leads to overly engineered solutions that try to fit a square peg into a round hole. For example, I’ve had experienced C++ programmers write MMFC (Miles & Miles of F**king Code) to solve a problem that would’ve taken 10 lines in Python only because they don’t know a world outside of C++. How do seemingly smart people end up doing dumb things?
Just like the Tower of Babel in the good old book, we have a digital ecosystem that has mirrored the problems in the real world. We have created languages, culture and cult in our digital lives that puts a cruel spin to the term “intelligent design.” How can anyone afford to be a one-trick pony (I am a Java guy) when reality demands a jack-of-all-trades (I am a programmer)?
How will a C programmer architect a solution if he’s never heard of reflection? Will a Java programmer ever understand memory-mapped IO? So, if you don’t have a word for it, will the thought ever enter you mind?
