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Climate change and programming ?

Bret Victor, a famous figure on the programming scene, worked on Al Gore’s iPad/iPhone book on climate change "Our Choice" which won the Apple Design Award. He is also known for essays, talks, and demos on programming-related subjects that he publishes at his website. Recently he published another essay titled "What can a technologist do about climate change?". And judging by Bret's background it is well worth taking a look, - especially in the light of the current Climate Change Conference in Paris.

But that is not the reason I am mentioning this. The article is quite lengthy, but there are 4 sections that might be directly of interest to this Community (while I think everything there is interesting in general):

Wolfram Language (Mathematica there) is listed first in the "Languages for modeling physical systems" section. Modelica, the Wolfram System Modeler language, is given a paragraph of thoughts. I liked some parts, for instance:

It’s the craziest thing. ... The very concept of a “programming language” originated with languages for scientists — now such languages aren’t even part of the discussion! Yet they remain the tools by which humanity understands the world and builds a better one. ... Languages like these don’t get mentioned at programming language research conferences, or in discussions. They’re typically dismissed as “domain-specific”. This pejorative reflects a peculiar geocentrism of the programming language community, whose “general-purpose languages” such as Java and Python are in fact very much domain-specific — specific to the domain of software development. ... I’ve seen enormous effort expended on languages, tools, and frameworks for software developers. If you believe that language design can significantly affect the quality of software systems, then it should follow that language design can also affect the quality of energy systems. And if the quality of such energy systems will, in turn, affect the livability of our planet, then it’s critical that the language development community give modeling languages the attention they deserve.

Well I encourage you to read the original and perhaps share your thoughts here.

POSTED BY: Vitaliy Kaurov
2 Replies

This point about language literacy has come up recently in Stephen Wolfram's previous blog post on talking to AI. The problem of communicating with AI becomes much simpler if Wolfram Language becomes generally common.

Of course, developing AI seems like a good way of solving the world's problems, and in some ways a reasonable approach. But one has to admit that it also seems like wishful thinking, as does the idea of a technologist doing ordinary technology, as does the idea of just plodding along hoping someone smarter will take care of it.

More effective, in my opinion, is to learn the methods found in Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" and help develop that science of simple rules. Most difficult problems require this sort of approach, where the result is essentially computational, in essence simple, and it might not actually make sense in a sort of traditional way. For example, many problems can be phrased as a sort of algorithmic optimization, and this calls for surprising efficient programs.

At our summer school, many sorts of Wolfram Science projects are done, and there are always a few about ecology, a few about engineering, a few about optimization, and several about the pure underlying science of simple programs.

POSTED BY: Todd Rowland

I'll definitely read the full article later on, but I have to say... I feel there's an addition angle at work here when we're talking about languages that are "typically dismissed as domain-specific".

The thing is that some languages aren't even widely recognized as languages. People think of Mathematica (or Matlab, or Maple) as software suites, as programs they use for something. I know I've certainly heard people say that they can't program, but they know how to use Mathematica. (Why yes, I nearly fainted too, thanks for asking.) Let's see if the recent christening of the Wolfram Language actually helped.

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert
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