It is intuitive to think of code as being hard to understand. We need to write comments and stick to stylistic conventions to make code readable, and are constantly inventing new languages that are supposedly easier to read than existing ones. We need to write our programs in modular ways, so that our puny brains can abstract away the details and understand the parts one by one. But is the alternative better? Is code hard to understand, or is it enabling us to handle (if barely so) an amount of complexity that we'd have no way to tackle without it?
This got me thinking about pseudocode. Pseudocode is written strictly for humans to read, and I think I can claim that its invention was enabled by the existence of proper programming languages. Is pseudocode not easier to understand than plain English prose? My experience trying to wrap my head around programming 101 algorithms by reading their Wikipedia articles says yes, very much so. A language for expressing and communicating how to do things - is this not what Sussman is talking about?
>>9
I don't think this is what Sussman is talking about as evidenced by the fact that he's interested in teaching using Scheme, and explicitly mentions in the paper running the program, but this was exactly my point. The natural conclusion seems to be that computing is in fact unnecessary, and that writing in a notation designed for understanding rather executing algorithms is even more beneficial. I say hoare logic, and you say pseudocode but really the point is the same.
~~ while we're on the topic of Sussman, what the fuck is this: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-computer-programs-1 ~~