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Comment by kazinator

14 days ago

C-like syntax is brutally hostile to programming beginners. There is not a shred of anything natural about it.

There's nothing natural about programming, because no ones like to be that formalized in their thinking process, especially with things that should be common sense (although ambiguity is still an issue). It's the recursive definition that get people. Especially when pointing that the things that the computer can do form a very small set. It's just that they can do it very fast.

You can see that when observing novices programming (without stack overflow or similar help). They often assumes that it will get done (magically) as soon as they call that function. And their code organization reflects the ad hoc thinking instead of a planned endeavor.

  • The formality of programming is unnatural to many (though the impulse to formality and robustness as displayed in logic & math clearly is millenia old, however niche), but a fair bit of it is as natural as language itself, or magic.