our discussions

From: Fyodor Tkachov <"Fyodor>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:53:55 +0300

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Dear Colleagues,

I would like to make a couple of comments about our recent discussions of our beloved Component Pascal.

0. There is absolutely no need to get emotional and to indulge in exaggerations.
We are discussing technical subjects. Let's stay rational.

1. I personally am rather concerned to identify and avoid unnecessary degrees of freedom in the language, which are very real productivity traps. I am grappling with complex algorithms, and it's impossible to unload even parts of the work to others (it will take them ages to learn the math), so any error of judgement in my architectural decisions -- hits me on the head later on.
Nah's are a waste of bandwidth -- let's hear about specific things (thanks to all who provided those!).

2. One particular kind of fallacy is heard surprisingly often even from most respectable experts.
A somewhat exaggerated example (based on a real interview) would run like this:
"Of course one can write software without mutliple inheritance. Of course one can write software without inheritance at all. But that's stupid, so let's adopt C++."

I am ashamed to have to remind us that in reality we seek a practical productivity balance between expressive power and complexity -- it's obvious that there are two extremes that should be avoided.

It's like seeking a minimum of a function on the segment [0,1] with everybody knowing that either end points are unacceptable.
If I propose to discuss a point which is a little closer to 0 than your current choice, it does not follow that you can invalidate it by stating that 0 is unacceptable. I know full well that 0 is unacceptable, and could argue back that 1 is unacceptable too, which you know is true.

We respect others's choices but are interested to hear about specific reasons, because history shows some of the reasons may prove to be based on mythology, accidental habits, etc. And some may be inapplicable in our sets of problems -- because each of us have their own functions to optimize.

One could argue that Component Pascal is simple enough that nit-picking is unnecessary.
However, my teaching and programming experience proves that it is not quite so.

Cheers
Fyodor

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Received on Sun Nov 28 2004 - 12:53:55 UTC