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I expect a maturity of the industry to arise when we make [effective abstractions]. Right, that's a great way of saying what I meant. To expound: effective abs
by andreyf 17y ago
I expect a maturity of the industry to arise when we make [effective abstractions].
Right, that's a great way of saying what I meant. To expound: effective abstractions must be "powerful" in the sense that they let you express ideas in broad strokes, and also "clear" in the sense that they wouldn't have unexpected properties (leak). Some of the macros I've seen in PG's Arc are good examples: they're intuitive and quick to look up. The problem with macros is that they aren't very polymorphic - you can't set default variables or pass in custom key/values as you can in Python's functions, for example.
- gruseom 17y agoThe problem with macros is that they aren't very polymorphic - you can't set default variables or pass in custom key/values as you can in Python's functions, for example. You can't? I think I do this all the time (unless I'm misunderstanding). Good post, by the way. I have been thinking about similar things recently and I agree with you. The idea that we'll build up a tower of abstractions that lets us sit on top and do powerful things forever is in some ways a gigantic mistake (q.v. "The Princess and the Pea"). You can do things with smaller, simpler white-box environments that you can't do with large, complicated black-box ones. Something like this is the principle behind what Alan Kay's group is working on, too. I wonder if the industry will ever absorb this. Based on what we know of software history so far, it would probably take some kind of killer app built on top of the radically new thing.