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Yeah, but in that sense, C is "just syntactic sugar" for Assembly. You keep using "syntactic sugar" in a disparaging sense when everything short of machine code

Yeah, but in that sense, C is "just syntactic sugar" for Assembly. You keep using "syntactic sugar" in a disparaging sense when everything short of machine code essentially qualifies. After all, what is a compiler but a program to strip out and distill the abstractions of using a higher level language into machine code? Like I don't need functions or methods, either, but that doesn't mean that I should avoid their use. Shouldn't I decide when implementing a function or DSL is worth the effort? Yes, it's time consuming, but abstractions provide real value in programming. All you're really saying is "I can implement a regex engine in C." I mean, no shit. But you're implying that means DSLs are somehow inappropriate or unworthy of use because of that. There are big flaws in that logic.

kerkeslager 9y ago
> Yeah, but in that sense, C is "just syntactic sugar" for Assembly. That's not true in anywhere near the same sense. There's not a 1 to 1 correspondence that lets you transform C semantics into assembly. Assembly has no counterpart to C types, for example. And if you recognize that your initial argument is flawed, the rest of what you're saying falls apart. > Like I don't need functions or methods, either, but that doesn't mean that I should avoid their use. If you can point out where I said you should avoid the use of DSLs I'll be very surprised. What I said is that the cost of implementing a DSL is rarely worth it, given a library will often provide 90% of the benefit a DSL with 10% of the effort. > Yes, it's time consuming, but abstractions provide real value in programming. Yep. And functions are an abstraction which has a very low cost in most programming languages and provides. > All you're really saying is "I can implement a regex engine in C." If that's what you think I said, you should read what I said again.

kerkeslager 9y ago

> Yeah, but in that sense, C is "just syntactic sugar" for Assembly. That's not true in anywhere near the same sense. There's not a 1 to 1 correspondence that lets you transform C semantics into assembly. Assembly has no counterpart to C types, for example. And if you recognize that your initial argument is flawed, the rest of what you're saying falls apart. > Like I don't need functions or methods, either, but that doesn't mean that I should avoid their use. If you can point out where I said you should avoid the use of DSLs I'll be very surprised. What I said is that the cost of implementing a DSL is rarely worth it, given a library will often provide 90% of the benefit a DSL with 10% of the effort. > Yes, it's time consuming, but abstractions provide real value in programming. Yep. And functions are an abstraction which has a very low cost in most programming languages and provides. > All you're really saying is "I can implement a regex engine in C." If that's what you think I said, you should read what I said again.