5 ms·

What happens when you scale java development to a team of that size? Short version: every optimisation you can dream of gets implemented. Clever use of Off hea

What happens when you scale java development to a team of that size? Short version: every optimisation you can dream of gets implemented. Clever use of Off heap datastructures aren’t going to be enough to impress. Forget thinking your custom class loader with cooperating javaAgent that manipulates the bytes of classes to dynamically add or remove instrumentation is going to impress. These things are just taken for granted. Even a bot that identifies dead code after traversing the AST, then re-generates valid source code from the (now pruned) AST, runs the test suite then checks in the change all by itself is seen as meh after a while. No matter how out-there an idea is, the play area is constrained by some immutable platform rules (the java memory model). So no matter how funky things get, any other java dev will still be able to reason about any code in the system. What happens when you remove those platform constraints? What happens when you say, we started off with lisp but we’ve ended up with something quite bespoke?

chii 5y ago
> What happens when you say, we started off with lisp but we’ve ended up with something quite bespoke? you end up with what amounts to bank python: https://calpaterson.com/bank-python.html https://calpaterson.com/bank-python.html
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  This is the best answer so far. Bank Python ain’t so bad. I’m going to stop worrying so much about lisp macro abuse. And I’m going to finally start reading let over lambda.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  the difference being of course that python the language is not designed for this, whereas lisp is
medo-bear 5y ago
> What happens when you remove those platform constraints? What happens when you say, we started off with lisp but we’ve ended up with something quite bespoke? i think lisp is very nicely structured so that you only allow a certain subset to be used according to seniority. if you have good development paractices at hand, then even if you have a very bespoke program it will be well documented and anything ecentric is explained lisp is indeed very powerful, but so is c++ for example. the difference is that the syntax of lisp allows you to be neater where you want power and more conservative where you don't, far more easily

chii 5y ago

> What happens when you say, we started off with lisp but we’ve ended up with something quite bespoke? you end up with what amounts to bank python: https://calpaterson.com/bank-python.html https://calpaterson.com/bank-python.html

CraigJPerry 5y ago
This is the best answer so far. Bank Python ain’t so bad. I’m going to stop worrying so much about lisp macro abuse. And I’m going to finally start reading let over lambda.
medo-bear 5y ago
the difference being of course that python the language is not designed for this, whereas lisp is

medo-bear 5y ago

> What happens when you remove those platform constraints? What happens when you say, we started off with lisp but we’ve ended up with something quite bespoke? i think lisp is very nicely structured so that you only allow a certain subset to be used according to seniority. if you have good development paractices at hand, then even if you have a very bespoke program it will be well documented and anything ecentric is explained lisp is indeed very powerful, but so is c++ for example. the difference is that the syntax of lisp allows you to be neater where you want power and more conservative where you don't, far more easily