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Shall we definitively say that a problem of all languages is that they evolve to the maximum complexity that a single brain can understand, then they collapse b

Shall we definitively say that a problem of all languages is that they evolve to the maximum complexity that a single brain can understand, then they collapse because nobody understands them? All languages start with “Lightweight, lightening fast and hotreloadable!”, then become a gas plant as they need abstractions to handle industry concerns (hello Reflection API, javaagents, NIO, functional programming, now the Cloud, then AI), Are there intrinsic properties a language can have that prevents bloating to the maximum complexity a human can handle, and yet allows it to handle industry usecases?

kaba0 4y ago
Java is absolutely not victim of language-complexification by adding the n+1th fancy feature of the day, if anything it is one of the few exceptions — it is a quite old language and yet modern Java has very little differences to what it was back than — all the spring magic happens through its standard way of operation, everything is a class with methods, and these primitives are assembled in novel ways, that’s it, and that’s how it supposed to be. No async, coroutines (it gets solved on the JVM-level and exposed through method calls), no separate syntax for stream operations (those are just method calls with “builder pattern), etc. I greatly recommend Guy Steele’s Growing a Language talk about this exact topic.
somewhereoutth 4y ago
Indeed! The 'Complexity Horizon'. Any constructed system will tend to that horizon as it continues to be developed (particularly if by multiple people over significant timescales) - unless there is a concerted effort to pull it back.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I love the ‘complexity horizon’ of algorithms: If something can be made simple, then we’ll build more complex things until we can’t understand it. All algorithm are always right above the maximum complexity that a single human can handle. Actually I believe it’s another surprising emergent effect of open-source: Linux’s or Postgres’ complexity horizon seem to have been managed, so that adding new stuff didn’t increase complexity, and it’s still possible to add new stuff THIRTY years later. As opposed to Excel.

kaba0 4y ago

Java is absolutely not victim of language-complexification by adding the n+1th fancy feature of the day, if anything it is one of the few exceptions — it is a quite old language and yet modern Java has very little differences to what it was back than — all the spring magic happens through its standard way of operation, everything is a class with methods, and these primitives are assembled in novel ways, that’s it, and that’s how it supposed to be. No async, coroutines (it gets solved on the JVM-level and exposed through method calls), no separate syntax for stream operations (those are just method calls with “builder pattern), etc. I greatly recommend Guy Steele’s Growing a Language talk about this exact topic.

somewhereoutth 4y ago

Indeed! The 'Complexity Horizon'. Any constructed system will tend to that horizon as it continues to be developed (particularly if by multiple people over significant timescales) - unless there is a concerted effort to pull it back.

eastbound 4y ago
I love the ‘complexity horizon’ of algorithms: If something can be made simple, then we’ll build more complex things until we can’t understand it. All algorithm are always right above the maximum complexity that a single human can handle. Actually I believe it’s another surprising emergent effect of open-source: Linux’s or Postgres’ complexity horizon seem to have been managed, so that adding new stuff didn’t increase complexity, and it’s still possible to add new stuff THIRTY years later. As opposed to Excel.