Rising above the mechanics of computation
Programming has been proven to be mainly a linguistic activity, with little or no need for mathematical ability. In contrast, the models of computation that current programming languages are based on are mainly mathematical in nature. This creates an intent-to-implementation gap where an intent has to be translated into a code structure that may look very different from the intent. This essay explores how programming languages are stuck in the primitives of the models of computation, how that impacts the reading, writing and logical correctness of code and suggests some ways that things may be improved. As a first observation, SQL , XSLT and spreadsheets are examples of programming that are very successfully performed by people without any programmer training. They may be doing something right. Implications of the intent-to-implementation gap While there are implementation patterns that can be learned, they are not direct replacements for the intent and often get other intents mixed i...