Re:Why functional programming matters (1990) [pdf]
by dllthomas on Thursday May 07, 2015 @12:00PM
(#9506004)
'To say "every language design has its own set of tradeoffs" implies that all languages are equal'
I don't think that implication is there at all. It absolutely doesn't hold for strong notions of equality - strong equality of all languages should imply that they all share a single set of tradeoffs.
It also clearly doesn't hold for "equal suitability to any purpose", since something less suitable to the purpose may be traded off for something more suitable.
I think any general notion of "equality of quality" can probably be viewed as a special case of the above reasoning - we are picking a set of attributes, of benefits and drawbacks - but we've no guarantee that they all net out the same however we are measuring them.
I don't think that implication is there at all. It absolutely doesn't hold for strong notions of equality - strong equality of all languages should imply that they all share a single set of tradeoffs.
It also clearly doesn't hold for "equal suitability to any purpose", since something less suitable to the purpose may be traded off for something more suitable.
I think any general notion of "equality of quality" can probably be viewed as a special case of the above reasoning - we are picking a set of attributes, of benefits and drawbacks - but we've no guarantee that they all net out the same however we are measuring them.