The Two Cultures of Programming

Joshua Ballanco

•

Sep. 28, 2016

• •

The Two
Cultures
Joshua Ballanco, Ph.D.
‸ of
Programming

Are you:
✔ a Scientist
✔ a Programmer
✔ tired from all the Linear Algebra

Background
• 1991 – Learn to program (age 11)
• 1996 – Recompile Linux kernel
• 1998 – Do something with Linux other than ...

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The Two Cultures of Programming

Sep. 28, 2016

• •

Joshua Ballanco

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In 1959 C.P. Snow's famous lecture, "The Two Cultures", decried the failure of educated people in the sciences and humanities to work together. Today we have a similar divide opening between those who write software for science and those who write it for "everything else". In this talk, we'll review the current state of affairs and look at what Julia might do to remedy the situation. The hope is that Julia can be a great programming language not just for science, but for programmers everywhere.

1. The Two Cultures Joshua Ballanco, Ph.D. ‸ of Programming
2. Are you: ✔ a Scientist ✔ a Programmer ✔ tired from all the Linear Algebra
3. Background • 1991 – Learn to program (age 11) • 1996 – Recompile Linux kernel • 1998 – Do something with Linux other than recompile a kernel • 2002 – B.S. in Chemistry • 2008 – Server Software Engineer at Apple • 2012 – Ph.D. in Chemical Biology • 2013 – Software Engineering Consultant • 2014 – Discover Julia
4. Background Science Programming
5. What’s this about? Thesis “A good scientiﬁc programming language will also be a good general purpose programming language.”
6. What’s this about? Question Do scientists and programmers program differently?
7. History 1959
8. History • The Two Cultures • Science • Humanities
9. History • English perspective • Humanities look down on the sciences… • But humanities could beneﬁt from scientiﬁc method
10. History • American perspective • Scientists reject need for study of humanities… • But scientists could beneﬁt from improved communication skills
11. History • Humanities – Understand humans and our interaction with the world • Sciences – Discover the immutable laws that govern nature • Both – Seek to increase the wealth of human knowledge
12. Scientists vs Programmers • Tooling • Version Control • Editors/IDEs • Debuggers http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/13/048744
13. Scientists vs Programmers • Code Organization Rails CellProﬁler SLOC: 209114 SLOC: 147512
14. Scientists vs Programmers • Priorities “Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.” “We should forget about small efﬁciencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.” – Donald Knuth
15. Programmers = Humanities? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M
16. Programmers = Humanities? https://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html
17. The Two Cultures • Scientists – Programming is a tool to generate interesting results • Programmers – Software is an artifact that should be crafted with care • Both – Make the computer do stuff!
18. Why do I care? 0 700 1400 2100 2800 3500 NumPy SciPy Rails 1000x Lines of Code Contributors
19. Why do I care?
20. Why do I care? http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21695377-professors- unprofessional-programs-have-created-new-profession-more
21. Why do I care? Julia can be the language that uniﬁes science and programming
22. How? • Pkg.generate() • Readability • Array indexing • Testing • REPL
23. How? • Pkg.generate() • Brilliant! • Embraces the importance of community • What about Project.generate()?
24. How? • Readability • Unicode operators? Brilliant…sometimes! • “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” – Martin Fowler
25. How? • Array indexing • Arbitrary indexing? Brilliant! • “1-based indexing…eww!” • “I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano- Dijkstras.” – Alan Kay
26. How? • Testing • Julia: @test, @test_throws • Ruby:
27. How? • REPL • Shell? Help? C++?!? Brilliant! • REPL as exploration vs REPL as dev tool • workspace()? Brilliant! • method redeﬁnition… boo! (Infamous #265)
28. How? You!
29. Joshua Ballanco jballanc@gmail.com https://github.com/jballanc @manhattanmetric Thank You!

Software

1. The Two Cultures Joshua Ballanco, Ph.D. ‸ of Programming
2. Are you: ✔ a Scientist ✔ a Programmer ✔ tired from all the Linear Algebra
3. Background • 1991 – Learn to program (age 11) • 1996 – Recompile Linux kernel • 1998 – Do something with Linux other than recompile a kernel • 2002 – B.S. in Chemistry • 2008 – Server Software Engineer at Apple • 2012 – Ph.D. in Chemical Biology • 2013 – Software Engineering Consultant • 2014 – Discover Julia
4. Background Science Programming
5. What’s this about? Thesis “A good scientiﬁc programming language will also be a good general purpose programming language.”
6. What’s this about? Question Do scientists and programmers program differently?
7. History 1959
8. History • The Two Cultures • Science • Humanities
9. History • English perspective • Humanities look down on the sciences… • But humanities could beneﬁt from scientiﬁc method
10. History • American perspective • Scientists reject need for study of humanities… • But scientists could beneﬁt from improved communication skills
11. History • Humanities – Understand humans and our interaction with the world • Sciences – Discover the immutable laws that govern nature • Both – Seek to increase the wealth of human knowledge
12. Scientists vs Programmers • Tooling • Version Control • Editors/IDEs • Debuggers http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/13/048744
13. Scientists vs Programmers • Code Organization Rails CellProﬁler SLOC: 209114 SLOC: 147512
14. Scientists vs Programmers • Priorities “Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.” “We should forget about small efﬁciencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.” – Donald Knuth
15. Programmers = Humanities? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M
16. Programmers = Humanities? https://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html
17. The Two Cultures • Scientists – Programming is a tool to generate interesting results • Programmers – Software is an artifact that should be crafted with care • Both – Make the computer do stuff!
18. Why do I care? 0 700 1400 2100 2800 3500 NumPy SciPy Rails 1000x Lines of Code Contributors
19. Why do I care?
20. Why do I care? http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21695377-professors- unprofessional-programs-have-created-new-profession-more
21. Why do I care? Julia can be the language that uniﬁes science and programming
22. How? • Pkg.generate() • Readability • Array indexing • Testing • REPL
23. How? • Pkg.generate() • Brilliant! • Embraces the importance of community • What about Project.generate()?
24. How? • Readability • Unicode operators? Brilliant…sometimes! • “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” – Martin Fowler
25. How? • Array indexing • Arbitrary indexing? Brilliant! • “1-based indexing…eww!” • “I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano- Dijkstras.” – Alan Kay
26. How? • Testing • Julia: @test, @test_throws • Ruby:
27. How? • REPL • Shell? Help? C++?!? Brilliant! • REPL as exploration vs REPL as dev tool • workspace()? Brilliant! • method redeﬁnition… boo! (Infamous #265)
28. How? You!
29. Joshua Ballanco jballanc@gmail.com https://github.com/jballanc @manhattanmetric Thank You!