Hacker News Reader

This argument could also be used to support using a dual-language approach: with only two languages, you don't have the drawbacks of trying to get 10 best-in-breed implementations to work together, but as long as the two are complementary, it's unlikely that any problem which is a show-stopping, incredibly poor, fit for one will be equally wrong in the other.

View on HN

That's actually what Lua, Python and Shell are doing: the first language is the scripting language, the second language is C in some form. And obviously, that's a successful strategy. But most users won't dive in the C side. Partly because the internal API is more difficult sometimes, and partly because the C part is not as portable as the scripting part.

But even then, I think there's something more needed - perhaps complementary paradigms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com