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0 pointsJonChesterfield2y ago0 comments

A programming language is a pointless obstacle in the way of writing the compiler IR directly. And the compiler IR is a pointless obstacle in the way of writing the machine code directly.

Low code GUIs are a weird code generator, just the same as all the other programming languages.

Whether it's an obfuscation or an enabler depends on your perspective and what you're trying to do with it.

In particular, programming languages are pretty much a library (called the compiler runtime) with a text user interface on top.

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sfn422y ago· 2 in thread

No, a programming language is a useful tool. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from writing machine code directly, go right ahead if you think that's easier for you.

JonChesterfieldOP2y ago

Such as in the implementation of a JIT. There emitting the machine code directly is less bother than emitting assembly and much less bother than emitting C, compiling it and then loading it into the address space.

The low code systems being derided here are programming languages. They're languages you use to program computers with.

I suppose one could define "programming language" to be "a language for programming computers that is useful in some context", but they're pretty much all useful in some context. Maybe one could define it as being mandatory to use text editing to count as a programming language, but the smalltalk instances are something of a counter argument, as are the UML things.

sfn422y ago

Alright.

You say low code systems are programming languages, I said they're GUIs on top of software libraries. So in essence we both just said low code systems are graphical programming languages, in different words.

The problem with these graphical programming languages is that they are constrained. To a developer like me they take away my freedom to do what I want, especially if they attempt to target non-developers. And even if there existed a totally complete general purpose graphical programming language, it would just be another programming language with the caveat that instead of just writing whatever I want I have to find it in some menu and drag it somewhere and whatever else. It's just a less convenient way of doing the same thing.

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