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In my experience, every technology focused on building a "simple" alternative to a long-established "complex" technology is doomed to discover exactly _why_ the

In my experience, every technology focused on building a "simple" alternative to a long-established "complex" technology is doomed to discover exactly _why_ the other one became "complex." Also spawn at least five "simple" alternatives. Doesn't mean nothing good comes out of them, and if it's simplicity that motivates people then eh, I'll take it, but gosh darn the cycle is a bit grating by now.

orhmeh09 7y ago
Could you provide some examples? Without having had that experience, I’m having trouble picturing a concrete example that I would be sure is of the same kind.
- LaGrange 7y ago
  Nginx is probably my fav of the surviving-and-thriving ones. It still remains very distinct from Apache, but calling it simpler would be a large stretch. Projects like qmail discovered the reason in a somewhat _harder_ manner. And yes, I'd argue Python is yet another case, as it grew _at least_ as complex as Perl.
newen 7y ago
Haha, what was that quote? Something like, any language is going to iterate towards a crappy version of lisp.
- tjalfi 7y ago
  Greenspun's Tenth Rule[0] Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. - Philip Greenspun [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule
  - aitchnyu 7y ago
    How would you subvert Greenspun in large codebases without Common Lisp? I once used Drools the rules engine which used a dynamic scripting language on Java objects. Python could have replaced that language, with much better tooling, errors etc.
    - tjalfi 7y ago
      Could you have written that system in a mix of Java and or another scripting language such as JRuby[0]? [0] http://wiki.c2.com/?AlternateHardAndSoftLayers http://wiki.c2.com/?AlternateHardAndSoftLayers
      - aitchnyu 7y ago
        IIRC MVEL language was integrated deeply into Drools. JRuby would have been awesome.

orhmeh09 7y ago

Could you provide some examples? Without having had that experience, I’m having trouble picturing a concrete example that I would be sure is of the same kind.

LaGrange 7y ago
Nginx is probably my fav of the surviving-and-thriving ones. It still remains very distinct from Apache, but calling it simpler would be a large stretch. Projects like qmail discovered the reason in a somewhat _harder_ manner. And yes, I'd argue Python is yet another case, as it grew _at least_ as complex as Perl.

newen 7y ago

Haha, what was that quote? Something like, any language is going to iterate towards a crappy version of lisp.

tjalfi 7y ago
Greenspun's Tenth Rule[0] Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. - Philip Greenspun [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule
- aitchnyu 7y ago
  How would you subvert Greenspun in large codebases without Common Lisp? I once used Drools the rules engine which used a dynamic scripting language on Java objects. Python could have replaced that language, with much better tooling, errors etc.
  - tjalfi 7y ago
    Could you have written that system in a mix of Java and or another scripting language such as JRuby[0]? [0] http://wiki.c2.com/?AlternateHardAndSoftLayers http://wiki.c2.com/?AlternateHardAndSoftLayers
    - aitchnyu 7y ago
      IIRC MVEL language was integrated deeply into Drools. JRuby would have been awesome.