Re:Michael Vanier: LFM and LFSP
by fauigerzigerk on Saturday October 24, 2009 @08:31AM
(#900406)
This means that there is a glass ceiling of abstraction; your designs can only get this abstract and no more. This is reassuring to Joe Average, because he knows that he isn't going to see any code he can't understand.
That's the intention, but the reality is quite different. When smart people really need to write more abstract code in a weak language they will go to great lengths, including on the fly byte code manipulation and all kinds of weird proxying hacks. Or look what they do with CSS.
So, the abstractions are always possible, albeit in a way that is even more complex and definitely more brittle than if they had been implemented in a more powerful language.
That's the intention, but the reality is quite different. When smart people really need to write more abstract code in a weak language they will go to great lengths, including on the fly byte code manipulation and all kinds of weird proxying hacks. Or look what they do with CSS.
So, the abstractions are always possible, albeit in a way that is even more complex and definitely more brittle than if they had been implemented in a more powerful language.