The Mythical Genius

I like diagrams. Here’s a follow up visual for my post on Inward and Outward facing programs!

Some functional vs imperative doodles. I'm showing data flow in each paradigm with an otherwise identical algorithm. The idea was to show structural analogs in data between the two paradigms, but there are more diagrams necessary to demonstrate all the analogs.

Why do these paradigms exist? What occurs to me is that computer memory and computer speed tend not to improve in lock step but rather 180 degrees out of phase from one another. So just after processing speed increases, it behooves the programmer to use lots of processor intensive programs that aren’t memory intensive. Then, memory makes a leap of its own that surpasses that of processing speed. At this point, programmers start to write programs that use lots of memory while sparing the processor. These shifts were much more frequent in the early days of computer hardware. The paradigm shifts of today are centered around ever increasing use of online facilities and ever smaller computers (from desktops to laptops to tablets to phones to watches and eventually even clothes). The race to the Internet has brought outward facing languages and programs to the forefront of modern programming, with, in my opinion, JavaScript at the helm. Hope this was interesting and informative! Please ask if you have any questions, or just if you think I’m totally off base here.

My early history with languages is as follows: 11 years of age - learning batch files 13 years of age - learning robot code in LabVIEW 14 years of age - learning robot code in C 15 years of age - learning Java (I consider this my first language) 16 years of age - learning Brainfuck 17 years of age - learning Lisp (Clojure, then Scheme (Racket)) I consider 17 to be the end of the formative years, since after this comes more professional, focused programming effort. It is necessary for a college student to become fluent in languages he may not enjoy at all, including C/++, Python, and Matlab. To be clear, yes, I hate all three(four) of these languages. I don’t want to be arrogant, but I do want to be clear. Programming is very natural for me. It is the only activity that I have ever found to be able to tap all of the mental faculties that I hold dear. It perfectly enhances and challenges my mind. Consequently, I know that I have significant aptitude for programming. I have always learned quickly in this field and I have so far found it easy to surpass my peers both in understanding, throughput, and efficiency. The one aspect of my code that rarely surpasses my peers is readability. I know this is not an uncommon observation for skillful coders. When I was younger, my dream was to be one of the genius coders of pop culture. I wanted to have the brilliant idea no one else thought of, like Zuckerberg in The Social Network. I wanted to rethink “possible,” like Richard in Silicon Valley. I wanted to impress everyone with my esoteric brilliance. Unfortunately, as I found out later, there is no such thing. No worthy piece of code can be written by a single individual - even if an individual wrote a worthy piece of code on his/her own, it wouldn’t be praiseworthy. So much of real software is tedious: thousands of lines of intricate, non-genius-y code that has to work well despite being far from novel or even remotely interesting. And for the most part, we coders can stomach a sprinkling of tedium. In fact, it can be relaxing to the mind and soothing to our jittery fingertips. But for one person to singlehandedly manage all of the tedious loops and procedures is, at the very best, cringeworthy. And that’s me! Welcome to my blog. Hope you enjoy!