Re: Interesting essay

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> His central argument that if a language is sufficiently flexible and
> powerful, it acts as a magnet for a certain kind of programmer. Hard
> things are sufficiently easy that a talented individual can do 80%
> implementations on their own. They scratch the personal itch, but the
> motivation for doing the really hard bits (making the solution truly
> available and open to others to work on) is lacking. (Or perhaps it
> isn't for lack of trying: they end up trying to convince other
> talented individuals that they must embrace this solution, but
> meanwhile those individuals are busy doing their own implementations.)
>  It is not primarily a technical problem anymore.

Or is it? One thing all these texts ignore is that the features that
make very easy to write the first 80% of the solution are the same
that make it hard to write the last 20%. For instance, flexibility
and dynamic typing favor neither stable implementations nor proper
documentation. 

It is a technical problem, but one that their worshiped tool is not good
for. So, they disregard it as non-technical, so that they do not need to
face the limitations of their cult.

-- Roberto