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"Everything is just" approaches usually result in hammering things that don't fit into fitting. That often ends badly. Computing has been through, at least: -
by Animats 2y ago
"Everything is just" approaches usually result in hammering things that don't fit into fitting.
That often ends badly. Computing has been through, at least:
- Everything is just a function (SICP)
- Everything is just an object (Smalltalk, and to some extent Java)
- Everything is just a closure (the original Common LISP object system)
- Everything is just a file of bytes (UNIX)
- Everything is just a database (IBM System/38, Tandem)
- Maxatar 2y agoNone of the things you mention ended badly though. I think all of those approaches you list are incredibly useful and important concepts and I am very happy that I not only know them, but that because of how universal they are I can leverage my knowledge of one approach to learn or apply another approach.
- thethimble 2y agoAnother angle on this is that there’s many formal axiomatic ways to define computing. Everything is just a Turing machine. Everything is just a function. Everything is the Conway’s game of life. The fact that all of these forms are equally expressive is quite a surprise when you first discover this. Importantly, it doesn’t mean that any one set of axioms is “more correct” than the other. They’re equally expressive.
- brudgers 2y agoEverything is just a Turing machine. That one ends in a tarpit where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
- Animats 2y agoThat's the generic problem with "Everything is a ...". Trying to force things into a paradigm that doesn't fit well complicates things.
- brudgers 2y agoThe generic problem is every generation thinks they invented sex. https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
- grugagag 2y agoIt is a simplification that makes easier to grasp a paradigm. Sure, it could be taken to extremes and pretend nothing else exists outside this ‘everything is a … “ bubble. Luckily we can learn from others’ mistakes and not fall into traps too often.
- zahlman 2y ago>where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. Real development IMX is not much different. People just have low standards for "interesting" nowadays, and also have vastly increased access to previous solutions for increasingly difficult problems. But while modern programming languages might be more pleasant to use in many ways, they have relatively little to do with the combined overall progress developers have made. Increased access to "compute" (as they say nowadays), effort put into planning and design, and the simple passage of time are all far more important factors in explaining where we are now IMO.
- hobs 2y agoI would go further and say that each one of these were so useful that they presented entirely new sets of problems to attempt to solve, because of how many other problems they directly addressed. It's like being mad that hammer was so successful we invented screw to improve on it's greatest hits.
- kurinikku 2y agoOP here. I would add "All you need is NAND".
- philipov 2y ago"All you need is Transistor" - can't believe how badly that ended!
- esalman 2y agoIt's because all you need is Ohm's law.
- rusk 2y agoJames Clerk Maxwell has entered the conversation
- osigurdson 2y agoOhm's law doesn't really work for transistors though.
- jdougan 2y ago- Everything is just a filesystem (Plan9/Inferno) - Everything is just a buffer (K&R C and many of its descendants) - Everything is just a logical assertion (Prolog) I look at the list and I see a bunch of successes, though some of them are niche.
- galaxyLogic 2y agoEverything (expressed with language) is just a model of something else. By making the model follow some simple rules which we think the real thing follows as well we can reason about what happens when some inputs to the real thing being modeled change, by runnign our model (-simulation). Thus you could add to your list: "Everything is just a simulation". Except the real thing of course :-)
- osigurdson 2y agoHow about everything is just state and transformations.
- hehehheh 2y agoEverything is just a turing machine after all* ** * modulo infinity ** except a small number of languages that are not
- dadadad100 2y agoEverything is a rule (Pega)
- jancsika 2y ago> - Everything is just a closure (the original Common LISP object system) What doesn't fit into this particular "everything?"
- igouy 2y agoFamously - everything is a string https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/everything+is+a+string https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/everything+is+a+string