Message Boards Message Boards

10
|
7196 Views
|
2 Replies
|
20 Total Likes
View groups...
Share
Share this post:

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
POSTED BY: Todd Rowland
POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert
Reply to this discussion
Community posts can be styled and formatted using the Markdown syntax.
Reply Preview
Attachments
Remove
or Discard

Group Abstract Group Abstract