On 1/18/26 10:57 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
Computers must be complex" is not a law of the universe.
True, but the universe occasionally will offer opportunities. We
sometimes do complex because we can.
I like to look at early C compilers as one example. They were amazing. A
high-level (i.e., not assembly) language that was very high performance,
and C programs could even be portable across different computers!
And we complained at how slow it was (I remember decades ago one
beautiful summer Friday afternoon fixing a bug that was going to turn
into flipping just 1-bit in the binary, and it took over an hour from
making the change in my editor to seeing the result running—and then
being able to leave for the day). I think there were design mistakes in
C, but it was *amazing*, and I think it was appropriately complex.
Time passed and the short comings of C are starting to bite.
I like to look at the current Rust compiler as a contrasting example. It
is even more amazing. It is a much more robust, higher-level language,
still very high performance, and programs can still be portable across
different computers.
And Rust developers today complain that the compiler is too slow. It can
sometimes take minutes for a large program to compile. I also think it
is appropriately complex, it is much more complex than was original C.
As much of an improvement over C as Rust is, there is *NO* way we could
have had Rust 50-years ago.
Forget that the design benefited from experience over those intervening
decades, in the 1970s there simply was not a computer on earth that
would have been able to run the Rust compiler. The Cray 1
"supercomputer" was a few years behind C and it wouldn't be able to hold
a candle to the Raspberry Pi 4 I sometimes run the Rust compiler on. And
compiling Rust on a Raspberry Pi is considered silly, because it is far
too slow.
We have the complexity of Rust, in part, because we can. And for this
amazing language it is worth it.
-kb
P.S. Yesterday was a glorious, beautiful, clear morning in LA (where I
often am these days). I remember when LA didn't have days like that.
Because all those '60s cars were on the road. No, I certainly don't want
a 2026 car, one that is designed like a disposable "smart" phone, but I
also hope we don't revert to the unburned gasoline belching "good old
days" of the 1960s.
P.P.S. And I'll be back in Boston Thursday, as the results of this
recent storm get nice and slushy.
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