I share the opinion of the author of this article. However this resort at the end of this article might be an illusion, the backend also suffers from complexity, you have package managers there as well (Composer if you use PHP), complex frameworks like Symfony/Laravel, cumbersome ORMs and for deployments you need Docker, Kubernetes, specific cloud tools, Elastic Search. It's also very complex these days. Personally I no longer enjoy modern web development at all. There is also the hyve-mind, if you dissent you get mocked, ridiculed and you encounter all kinds of aggression. It's all very depressing. I still love to code, so I started creating my own programming language Citrine (for which I got death threats by the way) - so that project is kind of my escape where I can still do things the way I want it. To be honest I don't know what happened to web development. At a certain point in time, I had the impression the web community consisted mainly of bright, intelligent and most of all, open-minded people. Today, it looks all enterprisey and there is a lot of peer pressure, maybe even dogma to conform to the norm. So, sorry for the personal notes here, but I guess I can relate to the story of the author very much. I personally think it's time for me to close this chapter and look for another line of work, because coding in an enterprise situation is just not something I want to do with the rest of my life as well. I would like to thank the author for this article, it's good to know I am not the only one who feels this way.
Citrine is also 1-indexed (https://citrine-lang.org/#lists), I think this would help people who are not developers to read and possibly verify code a bit easier. Of course it is just a small step, but I feel code in general is drifting away from the normal users, who seems to be confine to graphical interfaces. Wasn't it an objective once in the software development community to try and make code as accessible as possible?
Edit from poster: Because of character limit I had to shorten the headline somewhat, sorry for that. Caps are copied from the news article, so not shouting or anything.
This. Devs nowadays seem to be just NPCs, they jump on every bandwagon, it's very depressing. But this is the same with rest of society, groupthink is becoming a real problem. Unwanted opinions, thoughts are scrubbed everywhere.
I find the observation that 'programmers' are too cheap interesting. I think this might indeed be one of the core problems. Because devs are often a bit timid and clumsy regarding the negotiation process they are taken for granted and all those hyper-complex systems are forced upon them. If devs would charge 500% more, maybe companies would opt to change their tune and give control back to the devs.
Another aspect is 'responsibility'. Most companies don't want to bear any form of 'responsibility' and therefore they late Azure/Amazon/Google take care of it. However, what they forget is that in turn, they become dependent, which is even worse.
Hi, I am the creator of the language, my name is Gabor. You can ask questions if you like.
To answer some:
- Yes, we use machine translations, they serve as an example, they are far from perfect. Some language files are translated by native speakers. I think the website needs to be more clear about this.
- I use gendered language because coding is a men's job, women belong in the kitchen! ;-). No, just joking. Women are also welcome to become Citrine users. I just think the opening sentence is beautiful, it combines the concepts of male and female in a lovely, natural way ignoring today's PC-bullshit.
- No, Emoji-language is not allowed in the core. I only support natural languages. Endangered languages (EGIDS6 and higher) are also welcome. There is no limit.
I understand that there will be a lot of hate because of this language. I even received death threats over it. When a young developer I worked with brought up the idea I even laughed at him. However as I thought it over, the idea began to grow on me and I longed for a purely Dutch programming language (I had created one as a child for the C64 by just overriding the BASIC tokens). I figured that, if I longed for such a thing, maybe others do as well. I decided to share my code after some years just to give anyone interested some kind of basis or just discuss it.
It is important to realize that Citrine is trying to strike a balance. Programs will never read like a book. However, having a programming language using your own words and grammar just feels better and makes me more productive, I also tend to make fewer mistakes. The problem with just mixing Dutch with English programming languages is that is extremely ugly, also you never know when it's justified to use Dutch or English, especially when interacting with established English conventions, 3rd party software libraries or embedded languages in code (like shell or SQL). The other solution, translating everything into English is just horrible. I have encountered so many bugs that stemmed from miscommunication because of translation issues to English that I believe this will become a dead end eventually. One technique I am working on, that might help to improve the readability even further is simple macro processing, so you can say 'create a new Object' instead of 'Object new'.
Anyway, if you have any questions let me know, always happy to answer ;-)
“I use gendered language because coding is a men's job, women belong in the kitchen! ;-). No, just joking. Women are also welcome to become Citrine users. I just think the opening sentence is beautiful, it combines the concepts of male and female in a lovely, natural way ignoring today's PC-bullshit.”
Dude, really. If you gave a crap about effective communication you would not just have said that.
Hell, you would not even have thought of saying that; never mind typing it, reading it back to yourself, and then hitting Post cos you still think it’s a good idea. SMH
Your enthusiasm is admirable but your limited expertise is clearly showing. Instead of saying that you’re here to answer our questions, you should be the one who’s listening to our criticisms and then asking searching questions of us. A bit more humility and a lot less hubris. You and your product will be a lot better for it.
Go read the entire thread then, because that’s all you’ll be getting out of me and probably quite a few others now thanks to your awful attitude.
Programmers like you are the reason I finally taught myself how to code, so I would never have to depend on your sort for anything. You’re a smug, condescending martinet with a grossly inflated sense of your own specialness, and the sooner you grow up/the world kicks you to the curb, the better.
So here’s me expressing my freedom of thought and expression by having nothing more to do with you.
I applaud your effort. Programmers, of all people, should understand the effect that language has on shaping thoughts.
My biggest question is - why couple a new programming language and the translation system? Either system alone would be difficult to get a foothold. Wouldn't you be better off picking an existing programming language that you really like - one with good semantics and lots of libraries - and implementing the translation system on top of that? Some sort of Lisp would seem to be a natural fit. What does your language offer to someone who is already comfortable with English-based programming languages?
(sorry for double-commenting, but I didn't want to start a merged thread for two very different topics)
When I created Citrine the original purpose was not to make it localized, just as readable as possible. However, the language evolved into something different. At a certain point I figured that the grammar allows for a lot of flexibility which could be used to turn it into a localized language.
>I just think the opening sentence is beautiful, it combines the concepts of male and female in a lovely, natural way ignoring today's PC-bullshit.
Honestly, I am astonished that you can be so conscious of the effect of language on thinking in the context of programming, and yet so tone-deaf when writing your copy. This is not "today's PC bullshit", it is an effort to eradicate structural sexism going back at least half a century. It is not lovely and natural to use "man" as a default for "men and women" - it rings strangely to the modern ear, and you have attracted a number of comments about it. Maybe 40 years ago taking this position would have been forgivable, but in 2020 you are very much on the wrong side of this battle.
Love it. I phrased it this way just to trigger you. There is no structural sexism except maybe in some Islamic countries - but I don't hear anyone about that. Women are free to do whatever they want. If they feel offended by words they probably don't belong outside the house.
Well congrats on being a Grade-A douche. I strongly recommend you go find a new hobby—one you can play by yourself—because with salesmanship like that your project is already dead.
The Citrine license does not forbid women from using it, that would be true sexism. Abolishing words because of 'gendered language' is not something I believe in. I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Citrine is a project that cannot live without a free mind. As such, conforming to groupthink would kill Citrine and there would be nothing left to share anyway.
I admire your efforts, but it seems to me it would be easier just to get everyone on Earth to agree to speak the same language. That would merely be impossible.
Hiding = processing, so Twitter generates new content by filtering parts of the original content. Therefore, Twitter is a publisher and should be held responsible for all of its content. This should have been a no-brainer.
