Computer science is not physics

I've read Existential Type for a while and gotten to the post Languages and Machines, which discusses models of computation. It all makes a lot of sense: there are different ways of modelling computation and they are good for different things, the only catch is that all but one models a machine. A machine with computational units, storage, and what not.

A programming language is not used for manipulating registers and mutating memory cells, it's used for expressing thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas does not live in the physical world (a least that's what I've heard) so why should we rely on a language (read: C/C++/Java/etc) that inherently is bound to a (more or less) physical machine?

No one questions that the field of maths is unrelated to the physical world we live in, right? Maths would exists with or without humans discovering mathematical truths and proofs. That's because maths uses some axiomatic system (that just happens to be very useful in the real world). However, I'd hope that no one in their right mind would argue that maths is about the physical realisations of the axioms, e.g., that 1 apple + 2 apples is 3 apples. Maths is not about apples -- apples just happen to fit in the axiomatic system.

Dijkstra famously said:

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

I guess an equivalent statement about maths would be maths is no more about numbers than astronomy is about telescopes... Let me now rephrase the previous paragraph to emphasis my point.

No one questions that the field of computer science is unrelated to the physical world we live in, right? Computer science would exists with or without humans discovering computational truths and proofs. That's because computer science uses some computational model (that just happens to be very useful in the real world). However, I'd hope that no one in their right mind would argue that computer science is about the physical realisations of the models, e.g., the NAND gate. Computer science is not about NAND gates -- NAND gates just happen to fit in the computational model.

So why not call it computation science, or automated maths? No one would question the above paragraph if  I'd written automated maths instead of computer science.

Rob Pike: Less is exponentially more

I just read Rob Pike on the history of Go. I find it interesting that Go fails to attract C++ programmers, but instead attract Ruby and Python programmers. What does it take to make a C++ programmer switch to a new language? Maybe some clues can be found at the Socio-PLT.

Level up your automatic test suit

Having an automatic test suit has been mainstream for quite some time by know -- we know why and why we should do it. I personally had the luck of doing it at every workplace I ever been at. But I avent been fortunate to discover the correct way of runnin them until just a few days ago.

The command watch is a standard Linux command that repeatingly executes a command and prints the result in full screen in the terminal. I've used this lately to avoid "edit, alt-tab, up-arrow, enter, alt-tab, edit" cycles when devloping a python application, that is, to avoid having to switch to the consol I'm using to test the code and run run it.

It sounds like a small thing, but I recomend you try it. It suprisingly useful to see the result of the current code automatically when I save it.

 This is similar to Mim,  the build system I created some time ago. Mim could actually be extended such that it could run a script everytime the contents of a set of files (e.g., the depdendencies) changed. But since Mim isn't installed on every Linux machine, but watch is, watch has to do. :)