Should Programming Languages be Safe or Powerful?
lambdaland.org
Should a programming language be powerful and let a programmer do a lot, or should it be safe and protect the programmer from bad mistakes? Contrary to what the title insinuates, these are not diametrically opposed attributes. Nevertheless, this is the mindset that underlies notions such as, “macros, manual memory management, etc. are power tools—they’re not supposed to be safe.” If safety and power are not necessarily opposed, why does this notion persist?
  • @Blue_MorphoEnglish
    3•5 days ago

    Entire article is sophistry based around the author’s definition of powerful.

    Tldr: Haskell and C are equally powerful because they handle different problems. In effect, all languages are equally powerful which makes the author’s essay moot.

  • @JeeBaiChowEnglish
    1•4 days ago

    Right tool for the job. Sometimes you want performance, sometimes security. You want both, it’s gonna be expensive.