created, & modified, =this.modified
tags:y2025programming
rel:
Thought
Unsure of all this. It doesn’t make sense at the moment.
While not the only option for programming, it is significant that we’ve chosen a natural language to orchestrate the operations of code.
We’ve so wound ourselves up in words, for good reason. But we are still so bound and building (though, our capacity for word might not have developed very much at all in the course of time).
Like Adjacent characters Aesthetics the different words we use get laden with meaning (baggage) that doesn’t matter within the rules of a more formal language.
Does the programming language need these higher level, human graspable items? Should we return to lower level at some point completely? With prompting poised to replace programming (under some visions, delusional or not), this seems even worse.
Given infinite time, and total abandonment of written language, what programming would be make? For that exercise, we shouldn’t just go down in complexity but start somewhere new.
I’m not talking about a project like APL, whitespace or Scratch. I am only thinking what something stressing and bizarre driven to the unnecessary extremes. Like a language virus, which destroys our ability to program in the same manner (or we discover use of this language degrades the brain) and we are forced to start over. A computer of arachnids.
We haven’t developed anything better, so it makes sense that we use it, but language is failing in spaces where it has grown. These are shadows which grow, as the body grows.
Or maybe today I was just struggling.