Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Why should you learn to code?

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is claiming that we should no longer learn to code. Suppose he is right. Is writing a specification easier than coding? Some computer scientists will tell you that "Formal specifications are often just as hard to read, and almost as hard to write, as code." I then must ask, is writing prompts easier than coding? Do you get what you intended in each case?

As for me, I needed to know some coding for the same reason I needed to know some digital electronics. I wanted to better understand how the computation actually occurs and in some adequate degree of detail.

Understanding occurs over various levels of abstraction. For some purposes it is sufficient to have a broad overview. For other purposes one needs to deal with finer details on a less abstracted level. I.e., there is a concept hierarchy. Some things can only be understood by working on/at the right level of abstraction using the right concepts.  And concepts that work on one level of abstraction may not be valid on another level.

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