It never occurred to me that the "pro" in "program" referred to the future!
So, if "program" (πρόγραμμα) means "pre-written", like a royal edict that is posted publicly before it is to be obeyed, should we rename the field of "programming by demonstration" (for example, editor keyboard macros, spreadsheet formulas, or GeoGebra constructions) to "postgramming" or "epigramming"? (I suppose "epigram" already has a conflicting meaning.)
Because, in programming by example, the "program" is a log of the sequence of operations that were carried out, and perhaps why, so that we can repeat them, rather than being a prospective future plan for a sequence of operations to carry out in the future.
Oh hi! What a pleasant surprise to see you on this thread :)
I guess what I was thinking was that when you're doing that, you're largely "postgramming". Some of the recent versions of Subtext that cater to test-first development are more "programming" in the etymological sense, but the "program" in that case is what we'd normally call a test suite—although other recent versions of Subtext turn the execution trace, complete with recorded results, into the test suite, which is more a question of "postgramming".
So, if "program" (πρόγραμμα) means "pre-written", like a royal edict that is posted publicly before it is to be obeyed, should we rename the field of "programming by demonstration" (for example, editor keyboard macros, spreadsheet formulas, or GeoGebra constructions) to "postgramming" or "epigramming"? (I suppose "epigram" already has a conflicting meaning.)
Because, in programming by example, the "program" is a log of the sequence of operations that were carried out, and perhaps why, so that we can repeat them, rather than being a prospective future plan for a sequence of operations to carry out in the future.