On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 11:02:31 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:
On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 10:41:03 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
Languages pretty much always get more complicated over time,
and unless we're willing to get rid of more stuff, it's
guaranteed to just become more complicated over time rather
than less.
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take
away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I think that's actually a mistranslation from what he actually
said, but it's still quite good.
Liberties were taken there, but it's probably more applicable to
this situation than a lot of the times C/Unix beards try to play
it as though their tech of choice is beyond culpability.
For context, he's talking about the process of aeronautical
engineering and the thrust of this statement is really commentary
on effort and elegance.
A little before that, he talks about the grand irony that so much
thoughtful effort and design goes into refining things so they're
as simple as possible. But "simple" is relative to the thing and
the task (my understanding is that "simple" kind of conflates
"reliable" here, too). So this is where he rightly acknowledges
that the process of refinement isn't a waste for what it removes
even though it's often much greater than the effort to create
something in the first place.
It's wrapped in a broader understanding that you have to have
something that works at all before you can streamline it.
-Wyatt
