by Asim Jalis
So now the question arises: How can we apply the Fish insights to
programming? What is flair programming? Here are some ideas on
this.
MEET JEROME
Watching Matrix Revolutions last night it occurred to me that
programs should have names. Instead of calling a program Source
Control Manager, why not call it Jerome?
We like interacting with and responding to living things. This
phenomenon is called Biophilia. We like scenes with trees more
than pictures of bleak lifeless landscapes. Compare a picture
from Mars with the picture of a rainforest. Which one elicits a
quicker and stronger reaction?
Imagine if Apache was called Fred. Part of the reason Linux is so
popular is because it sounds more like a person than BSD, or
Windows.
OTHER WAYS TO MAKE PROGRAMMING FUN
But beyond this there must be other ways of making programming
fun. The fact is that there are many degrees of freedom in
writing a program that we train ourselves to ignore. What are
these degrees of freedom? How can we explore them without making
programs buggy?
We are so afraid of bugs that we give our classes and our methods
serious bureaucratic names. Try giving them playful names
instead. For example, instead of calling a method
XmlDeleteSubNodes(node), why not call it KillTheChildren(node).
Another thought: can we make programs humorous? I have seen this
in comments sometimes. It's good fun.
Let's personalize the data streams and the objects. Talk about
them like you would talk about an errant child.
Instead of throwing exceptions, let's yell or holler.
There might be a market for a playful programming language.
