13 ms·
To me, this sounds something like: "If you're not optimizing the assembler output of your Lisp code, you're not programming." Layers of abstraction exist for a
by djacobs 14y ago
To me, this sounds something like: "If you're not optimizing the assembler output of your Lisp code, you're not programming."
Layers of abstraction exist for a reason.
- ajross 14y agoAnd all abstractions are leaky. This is true outside of software too. The point doesn't seem to me to be an absolute. It's simply saying that delegation to subordinates must be augmented by "in the trenches" knowledge and research by senior executives. That doesn't sound wrong to me. And yes: if you have performance issues with your Lisp code and you're not looking at the generated machine code (or more likely in the modern world, doing tracing to identify bottlenecks which are probably in the IPC or I/O layers), you're not programming well. Continuing to whack around in your REPL is doing just what the JP Morgan executives were -- ignoring the details of the real problem in the hope that the abstraction will be sufficient.
- djacobs 14y agoAnd all abstractions are leaky. That's quite a generalization. Regardless, I'm not sure that CEOs should be told that "hey, you should definitely be micromanaging your team or you're not worth your salary" because some abstractions can be leaky when not designed well.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wisty 14y agoBad example. Assemblers rarely fuck up. It's more like "If you're not checking that a creaky hand-rolled code-generator actually produces sane output, you'r not programming".