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A comment on My Biggest Regret as a Programmer. Parent comment
Flexibility is good for frameworks, not for languages.
I read once a list of good and bad adjectives applied to paintings by Chinese painter Shi Tao. In the same vein here is my list for our topic.
Good computer languages are:
- Expressive, readable, memorisable, deterministic, stiff, simple, obvious, clear, concise, precise, sharp, smooth, pedestrian, regular, parsable.
Bad computer languages are:
- Obscure, arduous, terse, stark, viscous, flexible, lumpy, bumpy, redundant, verbose, restrictive, poetic, foolish, extravagant, awkward.
(This is not to be take too seriously, but just this: all built-in "flexibility" in languages leads to nightmares)
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Flexibility is good for frameworks, not for languages.
I read once a list of good and bad adjectives applied to paintings by Chinese painter Shi Tao. In the same vein here is my list for our topic.
Good computer languages are:
- Expressive, readable, memorisable, deterministic, stiff, simple, obvious, clear, concise, precise, sharp, smooth, pedestrian, regular, parsable.
Bad computer languages are:
- Obscure, arduous, terse, stark, viscous, flexible, lumpy, bumpy, redundant, verbose, restrictive, poetic, foolish, extravagant, awkward.
(This is not to be take too seriously, but just this: all built-in "flexibility" in languages leads to nightmares)