Something new for programming

One of my recent side projects involved R and R Studio. R is a programming language, an interpreted language with powerful data manipulation capabilities.

I am not impressed with R and I am quite disappointed with R Studio. I have ranted about them in a previous post. But in my ... excitement ... of R and R Studio, I missed the fact that we have something new in programming.

That something new is a new form of IDE, one that has several features:

• on-line (cloud-based)
• mixes code and documentation
• immediate display of output
• can share the code, document, and results

I call this new model the 'document, code, results, share' model. I suppose we could abbreviate it to 'DCRS', but even that short form seems a mouthful. It may be better to stick to "online IDE".

R Studio has a desktop version, which you install and run locally. It also has a cloud-based version -- all you need is a browser, an internet connection, and an account. The online version looks exactly like the desktop version -- something that I think will change as the folks at R Studio add features.

R Studio's puts code and documentation into the same file. R Studio uses a variant of Markdown language (named 'Rmd').

The concept of comments in code is not new. Comments are usually short text items that are denoted with special markers ('//' in C++ and '#' in many languages). The model has always been: code contains comments and the comments are denoted by specific characters or sequences.

Rmd inverts that model: You write a document and denote the code with special markers ('$$' for TeX and '```' for code). Instead of comments (small documents) in your code, you have code in your document.

R Studio runs your code -- all of it or a section that you specify -- and displays the results as part of your document. It is smart enough to pick through the document and identify the code.

The concept of code and documentation in one file is not exclusive to R Studio. There are other tools that do the same thing: Jupyter notebooks, Mozilla's Iodide, and Mathematica (possibly the oldest of the lot). Each allow for text and code, with output. Each also allow for sharing.

At a high level, these online IDEs do the same thing: Create a document, add code, see the results, and share.

Over the years, we've shared code through various means: physical media (punch cards, paper tape, magnetic tape, floppy disk), shared storage locations (network disks), and version-control repositories (CVS, Subversion, Github). All of these methods required some effort. The new online-IDEs reduce that effort; no need to attach files to e-mail, just send a link.

There are a few major inflection points in software development, and I believe that this is one of them. I expect the concept of mixing text and code and results will become popular. I expect the notion of sharing projects (the text, the code, the results) will become popular.

I don't expect all programs (or all programmers) to move to this model. Large systems, especially those with hard performance requirements, will stay in the traditional compile-deploy-run model with separate documentation.

I see this new model of document-code-results as a new form of programming, one that will open new areas. The document-code-results combination is a good match for sharing work and results, and is close in concept to academic and scientific journals (which contain text, analysis, and results of that analysis).

Programming languages have become powerful, and that supports this new model. A Fortran program for simulating water in a pipe required eight to ten pages; the Matlab language can perform the same work in roughly half a page. Modern languages are more concise and can present their ideas without the overhead of earlier computer languages. A small snippet of code is enough to convey a complex study. This makes them suitable for analysis and especially suitable for sharing code.

It won't be traditional programmers who flock to the document-code-results-share model. Instead it will be non-programmers who can use the analysis in their regular jobs.

The online IDE supports a project with these characteristics:

• small code
• multiple people
• output is easily visualizable
• sharing and enlightenment, not production

We've seen kind of change before. It happened with the early microcomputers and first PCs, when "civilians" (that is, people other than professional programmers) bought computers and taught themselves programming in BASIC. It happened slightly later with spreadsheets, when other "civilians" bought computers and taught themselves Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3 (and later, Excel). The "spreadsheet revolution" made computing available to many non-programmers, with impressive results. The "online IDE" could do the same.