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(1) The demand for fast compilation in languages like Go came from the terrible experience people had with C++ (2) The road to C++ was quite empirical, path-de
by PaulHoule 7mo ago
(1) The demand for fast compilation in languages like Go came from the terrible experience people had with C++
(2) The road to C++ was quite empirical, path-dependent, and "worse is better". Languages like PL/I, Ada, and the Modula series were aiming for the same niche but had a combination of bad ideas, excessive complication and being born just before we realized that every future OS outside the embedded space would look enough like POSIX that C's API for I/O would be portable
(3) Today I'm a little frustrated that we don't have languages that trade a slower build for more expressiveness or flexibility. Like I wish Python really exposed that PEG grammar. It doesn't have to be much harder to add an
unless(X):
statement that works like
if(!X):
in a language like Python than like LISP, it's like a few lines to add a production for the statement, another to rewrite the statement inside the compiler and it's done.