Exact Instructions Challenge PB&J Classroom Friendly | Josh Darnit

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t-writescode · 2026-03 · Recommendation

It’s a reference to a famous YouTube video[0] about how to write instructions that can be followed. One of the most important things a programmer needs to do is learn how to tell a computer how to do something. It’s a surprisingly hard skill because each step is way more complicated and has way more variables to go through. [VIDEO]

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godelski · 2026-02 · Reference

> why do you not program in assembly? There's a balance of levels of abstraction. Abstraction is a great thing. Abstraction can make your programs faster, more flexible, and more easy to understand. But abstraction can also make your programs slower, more brittle, and incomprehensible. The point of code is to write specification. That is what code is. The whole reason we use a pedantic and somewhat cryptic schema is that natural language is too abstract. This is the exact reason we created math. It really is even the same reason we created things like "legalese". Seriously, just try a simple exercise and be adversarial to yourself. Describe how to do something and try to find loopholes. Malicious compliance. It's hard, to defend and writing that spec becomes extremely verbose, right? Doesn't this actually start to become easier by using coding techniques? Strong definitions? Have we not all forgotten the old saying "a computer does exactly what you tell it to, not what you intend to tell it to do"? Vibe coding only adds a level of abstraction to that. It becomes "a computer does what it 'thinks' you are telling it to do, not what you intend to tell it to do". Be honest with yourself, which paradigm is easier to debug? Natural language is awesome because the abstraction really compresses concepts, but it requires inference of the listener. It requires you to determine what the speaker intends to say rather than what the speaker actually says. Without that you'd have to be peda

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geon · 2026-02 · Reference

No. Natural language is vague, ambiguous and indirect. Watch these poor children struggle with writing instructions for making a sandwich: [VIDEO]

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