@bodil This is how you know Racket is a production tool meant for real software engineers, whereas the student languages are obviously not. If it can't generate confused SO posts, it doesn't really exist in the professional's mind. Without struggle, there is no triumph. »
@bodil More seriously: over the years, I've come to feel that slightly inferior technologies are better — not in the Gabriel sense but because they create communities (of support and help) and ecosystems (of tools). It's my own theory of worse-is-better. »
@bodil Every "tool" is actually a "weakness", but it keeps a community together. There's a way for people to contribute. It's like a game that leaves little bonuses lying around. If a novice can make a small contrib, even better. They feel good, and now they've made a commitment. »
@bodil Perhaps every language should start out with bad scope, weird modules, funky overloading, floats. Programmers, a species accustomed to thinking salt mines are a natural habitat, will think nothing of it. But you have to have places for "one weird trick". (Like C++ templates.) »
@bodil People will rush in to show how clever they are, others to point out how the cleverness could go wrong, others to make "safe" versions of it, others to build linters for the it, and suddenly, you have an ecosystem.
Meanwhile Scheme will stay sitting in the corner, alone. •
Meanwhile Scheme will stay sitting in the corner, alone. •
@bodil My pithy slogan version of this is:
Inferior technologies create marketplaces.
(Of course, any judgment of superiority/inferiority should take into account architecture astronautics.)
Inferior technologies create marketplaces.
(Of course, any judgment of superiority/inferiority should take into account architecture astronautics.)
