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I find caring about a language being “ugly” such a weird concept. Like, imagine caring that a hammer is pretty or not… All I care about is how well it can hamme
by lukebitts 4y ago
I find caring about a language being “ugly” such a weird concept. Like, imagine caring that a hammer is pretty or not… All I care about is how well it can hammer my nails and that’s literally it.
- Torkel 4y agoI care a lot about how nice my tools are. Beauty is for sure important in all human endeavours.
- lukebitts 4y agoI care about how nice my tools are as well, but notice "nice" implies usefulness. Beauty? beauty is irrelevant, and it is irrelevant in many human endeavors where it is not treated as such.
- c54 4y agoYour interface with the hammer is your hands, so you might care if the grip is rough or slippery, apart from how well it hits nails. Your interface with code is your eyes, so it can matter a lot how it appears. We read code more than we write, so writing for legibility is important. People talk about line noise. And we use syntax highlighters and monospaced fonts. All of this is for appearances.
- lukebitts 4y agoMy interface with code is definitely not my eyes. My interface with code is the mental structures I keep in my mind while coding. Rust is perfectly legible, even better than legible, because all the structures in my mind can be simpler since the language guarantees so much on its own. Something as superficial as wether the language uses :: or whatever doesn’t even register while I’m programming. Also, that was a nonsense metaphor for you to use. The grip being slippery is so far removed from “beauty” that not even trying to change the subject to be about “interfacing” can redeem it. C++ is a slippery hammer, not because it’s ugly, but because it’s easy to hit yourself in the foot using it.