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Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer AgeIt becomes a heuristic for making the right decisions about language design. Any programming language can be divided into two parts: some set of fundamental operators that play the role of axioms, and the rest of the language, which could in principle be written in terms of these fundamental operators. I think the fundamental operators are the most important factor in a language's long term survival. The rest you can change. It's like the rule that in buying a house you should consider location first of all. Everything else you can fix later, but you can't fix the location. It's important not just that the axioms be well chosen, but that there be few of them. Mathematicians have always felt this way about axioms—the fewer, the better—and I think they're onto something. At the very least, it has to be a useful exercise to look closely at the core of a language to see if there are any axioms that could be weeded out. I've found in my long career as a slob that cruft breeds cruft, and I've seen this happen in software as well as under beds and in the corners of rooms ...» |
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