4 ms·
A good rule of thumb is the more powerful the language the stronger your justification needs to be for using it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_
by crdoconnor 8y ago
A good rule of thumb is the more powerful the language the stronger your justification needs to be for using it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power
LISP is, of course, way more powerful than most languages so it is more susceptible to technical debt.
- weavejester 8y agoI've used that quote from Berners-Lee in a presentation before; it's one that I tend to agree with. However, I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion from it. We want to choose the least powerful language for the job, but the least powerful language is frequently domain specific. Ideally you'd want to develop within a framework that makes it easy to develop restrictive, domain-specific languages. I'd suggest that Lisp is actually a good basis for this, as S-expressions make it easier to build smaller languages. Clojure in particular seems to be heading in this direction. Cognitect has spec and datomic, and there's been some interesting ideas from Christophe Grand (IIRC) about using relational programming outside the database.
- raspasov 8y agoSimplicity matters more than power.