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> This is also where it seems the clearest analogy lies to why I find your arguments to "complexity" so useless. Honestly, from everything you have posted so f

> This is also where it seems the clearest analogy lies to why I find your arguments to "complexity" so useless. Honestly, from everything you have posted so far, I really get the impression that you have never worked on programming language parsing, or with large code bases. The difference in algorithmic complexity is not "useless," it is the difference between being able to compile millions of lines of code in a few seconds on modest hardware, and needing a cluster just to get your builds done: https://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/compiling-a-million-lines-of-code-with-delphi https://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/compiling-a-mi...

WorldMaker 9y ago
Not saying algorithmic complexity is useless, only that it is a starting point in a discussion, not the end of the discussion. I've repeatedly used the analogy "tools in the toolbelt" as my return point in the discussion, so maybe you are missing plenty of my actual words in your "impression" that swings wildly toward an ad hominem attack. If we want to fight anecdote for anecdote, I've certainly seen millions of lines of code of Python analyzed ("compiled") in seconds on modest hardware, rather than a cluster. Differences there are more in the static typing versus dynamic typing, and strongly compiled versus weakly compiled/primarily interpreted there. Maybe a better anecdote is millions of lines of Haskell? Seen that too. Whitespace-sensitive languages scale just fine. I can understand it if you want to admit that you just don't like whitespace-sensitive languages for personal reasons, but there aren't very good technical reasons and you seem unhappy with my explanations of why that is the case. I'm not sure how much more I can try to explain it, and given you seem close to resorting to personal attacks I'm afraid this is likely where the conversation ends.

WorldMaker 9y ago

Not saying algorithmic complexity is useless, only that it is a starting point in a discussion, not the end of the discussion. I've repeatedly used the analogy "tools in the toolbelt" as my return point in the discussion, so maybe you are missing plenty of my actual words in your "impression" that swings wildly toward an ad hominem attack. If we want to fight anecdote for anecdote, I've certainly seen millions of lines of code of Python analyzed ("compiled") in seconds on modest hardware, rather than a cluster. Differences there are more in the static typing versus dynamic typing, and strongly compiled versus weakly compiled/primarily interpreted there. Maybe a better anecdote is millions of lines of Haskell? Seen that too. Whitespace-sensitive languages scale just fine. I can understand it if you want to admit that you just don't like whitespace-sensitive languages for personal reasons, but there aren't very good technical reasons and you seem unhappy with my explanations of why that is the case. I'm not sure how much more I can try to explain it, and given you seem close to resorting to personal attacks I'm afraid this is likely where the conversation ends.