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> The critically important distinction there is precisely that between, say, Haskell and Ruby. :) Absolutely. Why bother with all that unnecessary complexity i
by madhadron 15y ago
> The critically important distinction there is precisely that between, say, Haskell and Ruby. :)
Absolutely. Why bother with all that unnecessary complexity in Ruby?
- ajross 15y agoI know that was sarcasm (as was my original post), but that's kind of my point. Haskell is a simpler language than Ruby in a lot of ways. But the extra complexity in Ruby (or Perl, whatever -- pick your workaday language) is driven by clear practical concerns. Where a functional nut would sit and worry about getting a design right that correctly abstracts the properties of any right triangle, a web developer is happy to hard code the values for 3:4:5 because that's all that's required. And he isn't wrong to do so.
- fpgeek 15y agoPerhaps, but he isn't necessarily right to do so either. If the requirements for the triangle are uncertain enough or change often enough taking the time to get the abstraction right can be appropriate engineering tradeoff.