ShardPhoenix comments on Rationality quotes: September 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Morendil 01 September 2010 06:53AM

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Comment author: Morendil 01 September 2010 10:18:39AM 15 points [-]

Yes! I'm happy that at least one person clicks on that.

The software industry is currently held back by a conception of programming-as-manual-labor, consisting of semi-mechanically turning a specification document into executable code. In fact it's much closer to "the art of improving your understanding of some business domain by expressing the details of that domain in a formal notation". The resulting program isn't quite a by-product of that activity - it's important, though not nearly as important as distilling the domain understanding.

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 02 September 2010 04:00:54AM *  5 points [-]

While that's basically true, a significant part of any large program consists of dealing with "accidental complexity" that isn't really part of the "business logic". Of course in many cases that only makes the programming even less mechanical.