Re:The Muggle Coder
by derefr on Saturday December 05, 2009 @04:41AM
(#977960)
[I suppose this isn't a reply to this specific article, but rather to the title and the whole idea of frameworks, macros, DSLs, code-generators and other such tools being "magic":]
A compiler is magic that turns your code into other code. Even if you say you have the source of the compiler, and can thereby figure out the magic, there's still more magic that created that magic in an infinitely-recursing chain, and it's very hard[1] to intuit beyond one step. What's the difference between using one of these tools, and writing in a modified language that has this "feature" the tool introduces, with a compiler that's aware of it? If there isn't one, then by saying you dislike magic, you're condemning every layer of abstraction we've built up above CPU microcode.
A compiler is magic that turns your code into other code. Even if you say you have the source of the compiler, and can thereby figure out the magic, there's still more magic that created that magic in an infinitely-recursing chain, and it's very hard[1] to intuit beyond one step. What's the difference between using one of these tools, and writing in a modified language that has this "feature" the tool introduces, with a compiler that's aware of it? If there isn't one, then by saying you dislike magic, you're condemning every layer of abstraction we've built up above CPU microcode.
[1] Reflections on Trusting Trust - http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomps...