Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjfd | Hacker News Reader

I read this thought quite often here on hacker news but it is a bit alien to me. To me the charm of programming is the ability to---at least in theory---write anything. This is also embodied in the idea of Turing completeness.

There is a continuum between the possibilities of a programming language and the possibilities of a configuration file. As soon as one says that a programming language is suitable for a particular purpose one has moved a few steps towards the configuration file end of this continuum.

This is, of course, a personal preference but I very much prefer to enjoy the power of programming language as opposed to the lack thereof of configuration files. Therefore, I like programming languages that attempt to be useful for any purpose. My favorite language is still C++ and if I were to switch to something else I would be inclined towards Rust.

View on HN

A bit of rope is charming because you can build practically anything out of rope. For example, you can build skyscrapers out of bamboo and rope. But if you want that skyscraper to be useful, durable, safe, etc it may be better to use the rope for what rope is best at, and use other materials and tools for what they're best at.

Somehow I was expecting Lisp instead of C++ after all you've said. Any specific reason why you're not using Lisp?

Well, the ability to program anything includes the possibility to do tasks that require high performance. Also, I do like the fact that the compiler guards the type correctness of the program.

If your requirements are only high performance and improved type checking, then you are all set. The only language you need is C++. But the criteria above does not define all programming problems.

C++ is too complicated. "Nobody" writes C++, but a subset of it. Select your subset.

Dynamic typing in Lisp (and the like) is really nice for quick prototyping where program correctness is not key. You are exploring what you want to achieve with the program, be it algorithm level or architecture. C++ is not well suited for that, since type checking and memory worries are slowing you down, too many details to drag along. Hence no "silver bullet".

Sure, C++ is complicated. And the way templates are compiled is positively weird, which in turn sometimes leads to long compilation times. The 'select your subset' thing is often repeated, but I do not see much of that. I am a bit worried, though, that C++ seems to keep growing to the point where it really might get to big and complicated.

Quick prototyping is not something that I do. Nor am I very much interested in it. At my place of work I have seen it done around me after which it was my task to turn the python prototype into C++. The most surprising thing there was how far the prototype turned out to be from what was actually needed, to the point where I very much question whether the prototyping exercise was useful at all. YMMV regarding this, of course.

A python prototype is useful for specifying the correct program behavior. It's useful as a guide for later implementors. Better than a spec in a word document.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com