Re:Make the Leap from JavaScript to PureScript
by reificator on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @03:57PM
(#19984840)
> I don't buy this idea that the programming language you use determines the quality of your work. There is no evidence to support this.
Then I have a thought experiment. If language cannot determine the quality of your work, I would request that you write pong in brainfuck, and I will write pong in, let's say, javascript. Then we'll compare the quality of each implementation, and switch languages. Whoever wins in terms of quality in the first round would be expected to be the better developer, and so would win the second round handily.
Now that we've established that the quality of your work does in fact depend on the tools used to implement it, can we please reframe your original point in less absolute terms? Perhaps the programming language is not as important as people claim, and that given two projects in two languages of similar quality, the output should also be of similar quality?
How do we define similar quality? Is incremental improvement a worthwhile goal? Do different tasks require different features? I would much rather write a shader in HLSL than in BASIC.
Then I have a thought experiment. If language cannot determine the quality of your work, I would request that you write pong in brainfuck, and I will write pong in, let's say, javascript. Then we'll compare the quality of each implementation, and switch languages. Whoever wins in terms of quality in the first round would be expected to be the better developer, and so would win the second round handily.
Now that we've established that the quality of your work does in fact depend on the tools used to implement it, can we please reframe your original point in less absolute terms? Perhaps the programming language is not as important as people claim, and that given two projects in two languages of similar quality, the output should also be of similar quality?
How do we define similar quality? Is incremental improvement a worthwhile goal? Do different tasks require different features? I would much rather write a shader in HLSL than in BASIC.