编程与软件工程bloomberg.com编辑精选
代码是什么？
What Is Code?
2015 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Paul Ford 为彭博社撰写的长篇互动特稿《代码是什么？》，以幽默而扎实的方式向普通读者解释编程的本质、程序员的文化与工作方式。文章篇幅相当于一本小书，配有可交互的代码示例，多年来反复登上 Hacker News 首页。
为什么经久不衰：它把一个对外行晦涩的世界讲得既准确又有趣，兼具技术忠实度和叙事水准，至今仍是向人推荐入门编程文化的首选文章。
HN 评论精选
将其比作《新机器的灵魂》，称赞其技术准确性与叙事质量兼备。
我不想夸张，但这篇作品之出色怎么强调都不为过。它让我想起 Tracy Kidder 的《新机器的灵魂》——为大众打开了一个许多 HN 用户身处其中、却对外人来说很陌生的世界。技术上的忠实和讲故事的水准都令我惊叹。
dankohn1查看英文原文
I hate to sound hyperbolic, but I can't overstate how impressive this work is. For me, it evokes nothing so much as Tracy Kidder's The Soul of A New Machine [0] for opening up an obscure world (the one many HN posters live in, but obscure to most people). I am amazed both by the technical fidelity and by the quality of the story telling. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/
作者自述写作之难与内容不可避免的简化，坦承篇幅所限。
写这篇文章是场噩梦：无论多少人审阅，我总会漏掉些什么，总有读者能扯出一根线说'他没讲到本质'。我知道你们就在那里，以我为代言人而羞愧。我承认，我描述的'编译'只是这个话题的一小缕，对编程语言的刻画也是简化的。这本来是篇短文，结果成了本小书。抱歉有任何本该写进去的内容——他们只给了我一本杂志的篇幅。
clebio查看英文原文
> Writing this article was a nightmare because I know that no matter how many people review it, I’ll have missed something, some thread that a reader can pull and say, “He missed the essence of the subject.” I know you’re out there, ashamed to have me as an advocate. I accept that. I know that what I describe as “compilation” is but a tiny strand of that subject; I know that the ways I characterize programming languages are reductive. This was supposed to be a brief article, and it became a brief book. So my apologies for anything that absolutely should have been here, but isn’t. They gave me only one magazine.
批评文章对真正的外行并不友好，更像写给圈内人的技术文化介绍。
我觉得这篇文章并没有真正达到它的目标，除非它本来就是写给已经很懂技术、只是还不编程的人。它没通过我对外行解释的检验：我妈能看懂吗？从商业需求讲起，绕过计算机如何处理和显示文本，才碰到算法，然后又跑去谈会议和程序员的感受——很快就开始让你评估代码片段，而一个想知道'什么是代码'的读者此时连循环是什么都不知道。这更像写给已在技术圈内的人的'什么是技术文化'，人们喜欢它可能只是因为动画和交互元素。
monadgonad查看英文原文
I don't think this really achieves what it sets out to do, unless it was meant to be aimed at already very tech-literate people who just don't program yet. It fails my usual test for laypersons' explanations: would my mum understand it? My mum is a smart but non-techie person. I think this article, jumping off from its irrelevant take on business needs, through a (in my opinion) backwards diversion that fails to actually explain how computers process and display text, only then to touch on algorithms before racing off talking about conferences and how programmers feel about things, doesn't come close in all that to a solid laypersons' explanation. Soon it's asking you to evalute chunks of code when, if you are reading this article as someone who wants to know "what is code?", you don't even know what a loop is yet. This seems more like "What is tech culture?" for people who are already a part of tech culture. I think people like it for its animations and interactive elements, but when you strip those away there's very little actual content there.
认为它是向新手介绍编程的最佳入门文章，老手读来也有收获。
这是我最喜欢的文章之一，是我向对编程感兴趣或想成为开发者的人推荐的第一篇。即使作为熟练的程序员，也值得翻一翻——Paul Ford 对代码的整体呈现太引人入胜、信息量太足了。
tomglynch查看英文原文
This is one of my favourite articles. It's the first one I link to someone interested in coding or becoming a developer. Even as a competent programmer, it's worth having a flick through as Paul Ford's presentation of code as a whole is so engaging and informative.
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