Up-voted because I have interest and experience in AI, but the stuff about the brain is just nonsense. What does it even mean for the brain to have types (or not to have types, for that matter)?
> The brain is a (sophisticated) computer! It’s a big processor.
If you're a behaviorist, sure. But many (many) people don't see it this way. I'm not just talking about philosophers here, but also doctors, biologists, and chemists. How do you even define computer in such a context? I would suggest some reading of John Searle (see Mind: A Brief Introduction) to clarify some ideas here. Sure, we tend to hear stuff like "the brain is a parallel computer!" all the time, but these statements don't really mean much and are often sensationalized.
The analogy breaks down even worse from there. Comparing the JS event subsystem with fired electrical impulses in the brain? I mean, come on.
It's the same kind of argument made about ruby being 'developer friendly.' My hunch is that the brain is so much more complex than _any_ programming language - that drawing out likenesses to one over the others is overdoing it. It's like saying 'zucchini is like pizza because it can be cut into round slices like pepperoni.'
One point that was missed is that all those curly brackets look a bit like neurons :)
Whether or not the brain has any inherent structure for "types" is irrelevant. Types are a mechanism for providing reasoning about the correctness of code. At the very least they are a notification to the compiler or interpreter as to the function (and possibly the correctness) of various operations.
And besides, we segment and type the world all the time. Its a natural behavior to define an instance of a object and to reason about that object in isolation.
A lot of these points are really short-sighted. The reasoning behind eliminating code-as-data (note, not really self-modifying code) has more to do with efficiency than with clarity.
If you do accept the premise of the article then Javascript is not the only language for which it applies.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 12.3 ms ] thread> The brain is a (sophisticated) computer! It’s a big processor.
If you're a behaviorist, sure. But many (many) people don't see it this way. I'm not just talking about philosophers here, but also doctors, biologists, and chemists. How do you even define computer in such a context? I would suggest some reading of John Searle (see Mind: A Brief Introduction) to clarify some ideas here. Sure, we tend to hear stuff like "the brain is a parallel computer!" all the time, but these statements don't really mean much and are often sensationalized.
The analogy breaks down even worse from there. Comparing the JS event subsystem with fired electrical impulses in the brain? I mean, come on.
One point that was missed is that all those curly brackets look a bit like neurons :)
And besides, we segment and type the world all the time. Its a natural behavior to define an instance of a object and to reason about that object in isolation.
A lot of these points are really short-sighted. The reasoning behind eliminating code-as-data (note, not really self-modifying code) has more to do with efficiency than with clarity.
If you do accept the premise of the article then Javascript is not the only language for which it applies.