6 ms·

I dislike it when people say languages are either 'practical' or 'well designed'. As if a language is only useful if it's not built on sound mathematical ideas

by rjberry 12y ago

I dislike it when people say languages are either 'practical' or 'well designed'. As if a language is only useful if it's not built on sound mathematical ideas ... Generics are not a particularly new idea and nobody who uses language that implement them yearn for the days when they weren't around. See Paul's post on the idea that 'worse is better': http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-13/worseisworse.html http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-13/worseisworse.html

jbooth 12y ago
The point is that you reach an area where the mathematical ideas don't map perfectly to the underlying functionality you're providing. You can make your language "unsound" by violating those mathematical principles, or you can make something like the I/O monad. It is indeed "soundness" vs "practicality". EDIT: Oh, and that link seems to have misunderstood the 'worse is better' philosophy -- C++ isn't the champion of 'worse is better', C is.
- rjberry 12y ago
  Paul explains fairly well why he thinks C++ is a good example of "worse is better", including quotes from the language designer to that effect. I think when you get to more complicated (or at least alien) abstractions like the I/O Monad, it's not about whether it's practical to build software with it. It's perfectly practical - I know people working at big investment banks writing large scale software in Haskell, and they don't have any issue with it. What it comes down to is whether the people you work with will understand or want to invest the amount of time required to learn those abstractions. If you're working with very talented programmers, that might be yes. With the majority of programmers it is probably no. But we're not talking about the I/O Monad. We're talking about generics, which are not difficult to understand, and that Go lacks them is a shame, as it means that whole layers of abstraction are not available to the programmer, so they end up having to spend more time writing boilerplate.
  - jbooth 12y ago
    So he invested time in building up his straw-man before tearing it down? The problem with being in such a rush to confirm your own worldview is that you don't learn anything from anyone else's. The 'worse is better' philosophy is about valuing simplicity over completeness, specifically in the context of UNIX/C vs Lisp machines back in the 80s. How do you think most of those people feel about, say, the STL?
    - Retra 12y ago
      "Worse is better" doesn't preclude good design. Something like STL is fairly straightforward to implement, so it is not too hard to get it right. C++ has a problem with bloat and 'tacked on' features, and that is clearly 'worse is better' design. Backwards compatibility is a huge indicator of this kind of thinking. Partial backwards compatibility is an even more egregious example.
    - rjberry 12y ago
      Not that it particularly matters whether we're talking about C++, as it's rather tangential, the original essay by Richard P. Gabriel that coined the term "Worse is Better" talks about C++ (http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html): The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++. In his later essay on the same topic (http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf) he again talks about C++: In the computer world, the example of interest to JOOP readers is C++. Many would concede that languages like Smalltalk, Eiffel, and CLOS are vastly “better" in some sense than C++, but, because of its worse-is-better characteristics, the fortunes of object-oriented programming probably lie with C++. Simplicity is more often simplicity of implementation than interface. Anyone who's worked with the C standard library knows that it's anything but simple. There's a lot of incidental complexity that is due to design inconsistencies. The complex parts of a language like Haskell are the bits where the ideas themselves are complicated, but the power you get for overcoming that initial learning curve is very great.

by rjberry 12y ago

jbooth 12y ago

The point is that you reach an area where the mathematical ideas don't map perfectly to the underlying functionality you're providing. You can make your language "unsound" by violating those mathematical principles, or you can make something like the I/O monad. It is indeed "soundness" vs "practicality". EDIT: Oh, and that link seems to have misunderstood the 'worse is better' philosophy -- C++ isn't the champion of 'worse is better', C is.

rjberry 12y ago
Paul explains fairly well why he thinks C++ is a good example of "worse is better", including quotes from the language designer to that effect. I think when you get to more complicated (or at least alien) abstractions like the I/O Monad, it's not about whether it's practical to build software with it. It's perfectly practical - I know people working at big investment banks writing large scale software in Haskell, and they don't have any issue with it. What it comes down to is whether the people you work with will understand or want to invest the amount of time required to learn those abstractions. If you're working with very talented programmers, that might be yes. With the majority of programmers it is probably no. But we're not talking about the I/O Monad. We're talking about generics, which are not difficult to understand, and that Go lacks them is a shame, as it means that whole layers of abstraction are not available to the programmer, so they end up having to spend more time writing boilerplate.
- jbooth 12y ago
  So he invested time in building up his straw-man before tearing it down? The problem with being in such a rush to confirm your own worldview is that you don't learn anything from anyone else's. The 'worse is better' philosophy is about valuing simplicity over completeness, specifically in the context of UNIX/C vs Lisp machines back in the 80s. How do you think most of those people feel about, say, the STL?
  - Retra 12y ago
    "Worse is better" doesn't preclude good design. Something like STL is fairly straightforward to implement, so it is not too hard to get it right. C++ has a problem with bloat and 'tacked on' features, and that is clearly 'worse is better' design. Backwards compatibility is a huge indicator of this kind of thinking. Partial backwards compatibility is an even more egregious example.
  - rjberry 12y ago
    Not that it particularly matters whether we're talking about C++, as it's rather tangential, the original essay by Richard P. Gabriel that coined the term "Worse is Better" talks about C++ (http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html): The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++. In his later essay on the same topic (http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf http://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf) he again talks about C++: In the computer world, the example of interest to JOOP readers is C++. Many would concede that languages like Smalltalk, Eiffel, and CLOS are vastly “better" in some sense than C++, but, because of its worse-is-better characteristics, the fortunes of object-oriented programming probably lie with C++. Simplicity is more often simplicity of implementation than interface. Anyone who's worked with the C standard library knows that it's anything but simple. There's a lot of incidental complexity that is due to design inconsistencies. The complex parts of a language like Haskell are the bits where the ideas themselves are complicated, but the power you get for overcoming that initial learning curve is very great.