[Haskell-cafe] off-topic question: how well do you think linguistic relativity applies to PLs and programming?

Keshav Kini keshav.kini at gmail.com
Thu Jan 23 17:34:52 UTC 2014


Mikael Brockman <mbrock at goula.sh> writes:
> So just introducing a name (or even an ISBN number) isn't enough to
> establish an abstraction in the humanities -- you need to work for it,
> and new abstractions will probably remain fringey and unloved for a few
> years until they're accepted as part of normal discourse.
>
> There are similar issues in programming, like when introducing brand new
> abstract typeclasses, combinators, concepts, and so on.  Even
> introducing a dependency on a 3rd party library can sometimes resemble a
> kind of "namedropping."  But it's easier to get away with it in
> software!

Right, that's what I was talking about.  Actually, not only is it easier
to get away with it in software, it's the preferred option -- DRY is
good and NIH is bad, etc.

-Keshav



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