←back to thread

1401 points alankay | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom

This request originated via recent discussions on HN, and the forming of HARC! at YC Research. I'll be around for most of the day today (though the early evening).
1. lpalmes ◴[] No.11939993[source]
Hi Alan, If you are familiar with Go, what do you think about it's simplicity as a language? It's something other languages should start thinking about in their design?
replies(1): >>11946254 #
2. alankay1 ◴[] No.11946254[source]
"Simple" is not the main force in a good programming language
replies(1): >>11947942 #
3. lucasArg ◴[] No.11947942[source]
And, in your opinion, what is the _main force_ in a good programming language? Or maybe the top 3 :)
replies(1): >>11948812 #
4. alankay1 ◴[] No.11948812{3}[source]
Why don't you try to pick a few, and I'll try to comment?
replies(1): >>11960438 #
5. rubidium ◴[] No.11960438{4}[source]
things/persons/places

relationships

time

replies(1): >>11960505 #
6. alankay1 ◴[] No.11960505{5}[source]
These are often important, useful, and needed.

I would take a different perspective that puts as "higher forces" things like:

-- what helps thinking about things in general, about problems, and resolving them (epistemological concerns, which include the whole environment as intrinsic to "langauge")

-- representational matchups to what we are trying to model and create dynamic inference processes for (mathematical concerns -- this is why "mathematics" is a plural, in real math you invent maths when needed ...)

-- orthogonal axes for many areas, including meaning and optimizations, including definitions and meta definitions, debugging, reformulation, etc. (pragmatic concerns for eventually winding up with workable artifacts)

-- and so forth ...