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> The classic "blub" post by Paul Graham is usually read in "upwards" direction where people using a language without some abstractions (say, monads or borrow c
by tomku 6y ago
> The classic "blub" post by Paul Graham is usually read in "upwards" direction where people using a language without some abstractions (say, monads or borrow checkers) can't understand why they would need it when looking at a language that has them. There is probably also a "downwards" interpretation where people using such a language can no longer understand that it's possible to be productive in languages that lack the advanced abstractions.
Thank you, this is a very helpful framing of something I've recently been struggling to articulate about languages with sophisticated type systems after having surprisingly positive and productive experiences with Clojure and Go.
- kazinator 6y agoIt looks a lot like a manifestation of incommensurability as observed by Kuhn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift#Incommensurability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift#Incommensurabil... This is exactly what we see. People adhering to different computing paradigms use some of the same words (e.g. "type"), but they have different meanings and basically they talk past each other as a result.