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there's a very old argument in computer science between minimal standards and "batteries included" standards — RISC vs CISC, C vs C++, scheme vs common lisp, Al
by jhp123 4y ago
there's a very old argument in computer science between minimal standards and "batteries included" standards — RISC vs CISC, C vs C++, scheme vs common lisp, Algol W vs Algol 68 etc.
The web community, for whatever reason, is firmly in the "batteries included" camp. CSS alone is approaching the number of built-in symbols as a "big" language like common lisp or Perl. New features are always loudly celebrated, even if they overlap with existing features, are very complicated, and/or serve very niche use cases.
Personally I think we need a "scheme" for the web — a little language that handles all the important pieces (layout, interaction, accessibility) with as little surface area as possible. It would be easier to learn, easier to understand others' code, easier to implement.
- tines 4y agoBig languages are optimized for copy-and-paste; the more built-in features your language has, the fewer characters you need to steal from a StackOverflow answer. This meshes well with the copy-and-paste culture of web development, so it's likely that web technologies will always be complex this way.
- imbnwa 4y agoThat doesn't seem fair, CSS is a visual design DSL, whats the point of a DSL if it doesn't have batteries included?
- jancsika 4y ago> Personally I think we need a "scheme" for the web Yes! And since it's the web, perhaps put some training wheels for newcomers: easy global variables, more familiar syntax... let me time-travel and see how it goes: time travels Sorry, turns out those training wheels were a bad idea! Other than that, please open up your devTools console and tell me: what do you think? :)
- pessimizer 4y agoIs Scheme known for its training wheels?
- jancsika 4y agoI meant that Brendan Eich took something like Scheme and put the training wheels of automatic globals and familiar syntax on it.