> When Java, or C++, or Erlang, or Common Lisp, or Haskell programming becomes unbearable, it's almost always because the chain of abstractions overwhelms the

> When Java, or C++, or Erlang, or Common Lisp, or Haskell programming becomes unbearable, it's almost always because the chain of abstractions overwhelms the person building the system. I ran into a bug in an XOrg driver for an old r128 card a few years back. (I think I have that combination right.) As I remember it, I spent several hours tracing through layer upon layer of C macros to even begin to get an idea of what the code was doing. The bug turned out to be part of a structure getting overwritten clobbering a part of a vertex definition with a color value due to a mix up in the size of the structure. (I'm forgetting the details on this and I can't remember the bug number off hand or I'd look it up.) In any event, those layers of macros made it almost impossible to trace what the heck the code was doing without intimate knowledge of every part layer involved. I'd say chains of abstraction are more a feature of programming style rather than the language itself. Albeit, the language can ease the load a little.