It has occurred to me what may be one of the reasons why i have had this weird dislike for programming “languages”. – First off – a language is a means of communication with someone. You immerse yourself in learning a language because you get to see how people using that language see the world. This is because not all languages look the same.
Take Arabic for instance, where you can do all sorts of weird crazy cool cool-looking things in writing. So you’re not just learning merely a way to communicate, but you delve into that people’s culture and who knows, maybe soul.
They say that the most efficient way of learning a new language is by immersing yourself in the learning process, a thing which i can totally understand, because it’s probably a fun process for the one who wants to learn, and focus is important. We don’t like to be disturbed.
Which brings me to the topic of programming “languages”, like Python, C++, Javascript, PHP, etc.
Are they really languages?
Language implies that they are used to communicate, but are you really communicating with anyone or are you just taking energy and running it through some mazes – all the computer microchips and components – and you control it in order to do something you want?
You’re not communicating with anyone. So why is it called a “language” when in reality, it’s a tool for exerting control or an instruction set?
Sure you can do pretty things at the expense of others, but why would everyone agree to call it something it’s not?
As i was doing some Python work, i kept running into things like having some code, then a regex that makes sure the input gets “sanitized” before being passed into the function, otherwise the code may crash or otherwise reveal something about the system that the programmer or the maintainer wouldn’t want to be revealed, and an epiphany occured. You know, i think coding in general is a huge missed opportunity where one could have had the power to solve all world’s problems. Instead, the majority of coders have chosen to build mazes and pile things on top of things, while leaving everything that mattered behind.
Can you imagine a world where code would be used to find human problems? i mean imagine this scenario. Someone creates a program, and then that program is being used by other people. Some of those people find program flaws and choose to share it with the programmer and they end up making better versions, but a small part of people, choose to exploit said flaws.
Wouldn’t this be an immense opportunity if programming languages or languages in general would have the ability to pinpoint where these problems are, so we could talk to those people and find out what is going wrong in their life and figure out a solution? Can you imagine a world where code is being used not just to build meaningless products, but actually to be used to lift whoever needs lifting? Can you imagine how different the world would look, if people who make mistakes or bad choices get a second chance at figuring themselves out because that is how the system has been designed? To take care of it’s people? Can you imagine how incredible this would seem? i mean it wouldn’t make it a perfect world right away, but time wouldn’t be an issue would it if there was a world united by a code that connects people and gives people breaks to figure themselves out, become aware that they’ve hurt the system, figure out why they did it, and see if there’s ways to gain understanding and make proper amends, not necessarily in order to make a stronger and more strict and powerful system, but for gaining the ability to intentionally leave parts of it vulnerable, so people can always have the choice of inflicting some form of damage, enough for it to be noticed so that a local healing process can begin. After all, the system is only as good as the quality of it’s people.
