Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If you want to go even lower than that, coding is basically just saying yes or no in response to a yes or a no.

Sure, that's oversimplifying it, but that's the smallest unit of information being changed during computation.

But yes, once you learn the basics that are shared between most programming languages and don't get distracted by the nuances, it doesn't take that long to pick up a different language. Being proficient is of course another question, but achieving a basic understanding shouldn't take all that long when you just focus on how to if-else, how to setup loops, and how to assign variables.



All chemistry is just sharing electrons.


Well, it's more complicated than that - you see, occasionally the electrons are not shared, but given up entirely.


but that's one-sided sharing.


and electrons are just quarks, and quarks are just a state in a quantum field, and a quantum field is just...


Or positrons.


Not quite. It has to somehow store and later retrieve a few (infinite) “yes-nos” to be general enough.


All machines that satisfy a test of whether they can do yes-no, store the result of that yes-no, and then go to another yes-no are verifiably considered yes-no machines, that is, they are yes-no complete.


yes, at the lowest level its binary code, 0 and 1


I like to think of myself, actually, as not a code writer, but an author. I just use zeros and ones instead of words 'cause words will let you down.


I like that. Someone on my team referred to us as (data) plumbers and I thought that was a pretty fitting analogy too.





Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: