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“I know PG claims meta programming was the secret to ViaWeb's success, but I'm not sure how exactly that was the case, and even if true whether that is still re

“I know PG claims meta programming was the secret to ViaWeb's success, but I'm not sure how exactly that was the case, and even if true whether that is still relevant today” I can totally see this if you are alone or a very small tight team is working on the code. You will know what’s going on but once you start adding more people it will be very hard for them to work with such a codebase. I have done some really elegant stuff that made me super productive but looking at the code three years later I myself can barely figure out how it works or how to make changes. other people have almost no chance. Once you grow it’s probably good to stick to paradigms a lot of people in the Industry are familiar with.

phlakaton 7y ago
> I have done some really elegant stuff that made me super productive but looking at the code base three years later I myself can barely figure out how it works or how to make changes. Could well apply to me and some of my old C++ projects. Well, except for the super-productive part. PG would say that it's not that the abstractions afforded by metaprogramming are incomprehensible. It's just that, if you are a habitual Blub programmer, everything up the power curve from you is always going to appear weird and hairy. This sort of argument is a terrible one to have with generalizations, though. You should look at specific cases where metaprogramming has been used and analyze them on a case-by-case basis. Sure, a bad, leaky, poorly-documented abstraction is going to lead to grief. On the other hand, umpteen thousands of programmers use the metamagic of Rails on a daily basis and barely bat an eyelash. (Or so it seems to me.)
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Rails is a great example. For me it’s one level further up from simple meta programming. Writing stuff for yourself is one thing but writing stuff that’s universally usable for a lot of people is much harder.

phlakaton 7y ago

> I have done some really elegant stuff that made me super productive but looking at the code base three years later I myself can barely figure out how it works or how to make changes. Could well apply to me and some of my old C++ projects. Well, except for the super-productive part. PG would say that it's not that the abstractions afforded by metaprogramming are incomprehensible. It's just that, if you are a habitual Blub programmer, everything up the power curve from you is always going to appear weird and hairy. This sort of argument is a terrible one to have with generalizations, though. You should look at specific cases where metaprogramming has been used and analyze them on a case-by-case basis. Sure, a bad, leaky, poorly-documented abstraction is going to lead to grief. On the other hand, umpteen thousands of programmers use the metamagic of Rails on a daily basis and barely bat an eyelash. (Or so it seems to me.)

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Rails is a great example. For me it’s one level further up from simple meta programming. Writing stuff for yourself is one thing but writing stuff that’s universally usable for a lot of people is much harder.