The problem with current day programming and its causes
Current day (2021) programming (aka telling computers what to do – everyone needs to do that these days) has an accessibility problem.
The effect is that so called "end users" when they see obvious trivial problems that they would easily be able to fix
in a few minutes when passing by these probems absolutely (very frustratingly) cannot fix these because: ...
Problems
– There is a big (and growing) stack of tools to learn before even to begin (to tell computers what to do beyond what the developers designated to users).
It has gotten so bad that a job description emerged: "full stack developer".
– Code can't be accessed and fixed directly from within the space designated for the "users" (typically GUIs).
Overall the "wall of inaccessibility" between designated "users space" and designated "developer space" seems to have been been steadily growing.
Only locally shrinking maybe a bit sometimes but never overall shrinking.
It has gotten so bad that even suggesting that something could almost totally remove that barrier can make one subject to ridicule.
Guess what's going to be suggested here ...
– Publishing something that is more than "locally running toy code" but
a part of an interactive online program (even if it's a tiny trivial change like adding a button trivially combining some data)
has become increasingly difficult.
It has gotten so bad that this bloated unnecessary process now has attained a name: "deployment".
And a whole terminology and an "industry" has evolved.
– The current tools for programming have ...
- either a deterringly steep learning curve ...
- or quickly run out of expressiveness.
Likely causes (high abstraction level)
The causes for these problems (on a very high abstraction-level) are likely twofold:
- (A) the increasing centralization of the internet – an emerging governance problem – (Philosphically: This may perhaps be an "eternal" problem of any intelligent social life that periodically waves up?? maybe ...)
- (B) a technical software crisis – (sheer technical difficulty and an economics caused focus on short term investment focusing on fixing symptoms rather than fixing causes)
The "annotated lambda diagrams" (ALDs) discussed here would be an attempt in tackling the latter point: (B).
