Chris Granger reframes the concept of 'coding as literacy' during an a16z panel discussion on empowering non-technical workers with computational mental models.
Assertion Contradicted
Granger: Excel is the world's most popular programming language
“The most popular programming language in the world is Excel. It is programming just like everything else is. And Excel is used by eight hundred million people every single day, right?”
Insight
Granger: Programming languages model computer hardware rather than human processes
“We have this weird case right now where our languages, Python, pick any language, right? Is actually designed to model computer interaction, right? It's designed to model how computers work. Like, I'm gonna send TCP messages, and so on and so forth. But if you…”
Opinion
Granger: C and the actor model cannot solve modern computing challenges
“You know, C is not going to save us. You can't just stick the actor model on top of it and hope it's going to work.”
Opinion
Granger: Turning everyone into software programmers is neither realistic nor desirable
“I don't know that it's realistic, though, that, or even desirable, right, that we end up with, you know, far more programmers than we end up with anything else.”
Insight
Granger: Managing software complexity by stacking abstractions creates fragile systems
“Pure engineering makes this very pragmatic trade-off, right, which is that you tame complexity by adding a layer of abstraction. And this is like stacking teacups on top of teacups, right? You can do this for a little while, but eventually those teacups, that …”
Insight
Granger: Software bugs provide feedback on flawed thinking rather than signaling failure
“So you think about, like, when you get a wrong answer in, in a math class, right? You got it wrong, so you redo the problem. You just did it wrong, right? I mean, you do it right, or you do it as many times as you need to until you get it right. Whereas in sof…”