interesting that the UX of software has slowly evolved from document and dashboard metaphors to stream and event/alert metaphors, but the UX of code as seen by developers (DX?) really hasn't updated its metaphors afaict. It's all still "putting blocks together and running tests"
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at least that's what it looks like
I don't know what to call the underlying metaphor... building construction?
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Is there any good reading on DX metaphors? Feels like a lot of new shit has gotten thrown onto it... containers, just-in-time compilation, frameworks, orchestration riggings... but my mental model is still stuck in like 2004 era: write/compile or write/interpret loops
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oh yeah lambda type things don't neatly fill the building construction model at all
and of course machine learning/software 2.0 breaks the whole DX completely
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DOH! The core DX metaphor of code is “language”!
Even though programming has never felt like communication to me, even approximately. Not even like math.
It feels like mechanical and electrical assembly and rigging, not talking/writing.
Either I’m weird or the metaphor is bad.
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Function is certainly the primary purpose of code. Nothing matters if it doesn't do the thing.
But IMO thinking of code as communication is one of the defining traits of a good senior dev.
Often, the person you're communicating with is your future self.
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That’s very different from “telling the computer what to do” metaphor though, which feels just wrong above bytecode level
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Yea, I suppose if we're talking about communication *with the machine* it feels more like translation than communication to me.

