Too much flexibility is dangerous for large systems

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/18/11 3:01 PM, Ellery Newcomer wrote:
> On 01/18/2011 06:46 AM, spir wrote:
>> On 01/18/2011 12:41 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> bearophile wrote:
>>>> Found through Reddit, similar things can be said about D2:
>>>> http://kirkwylie.blogspot.com/2011/01/scala-considered-harmful-for-large.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think that article is bunk.
>>>
>>> Large Java programs (as related to me by corporate Java programmers)
>>> tend to be excessively complex because the language is too simple.
>>>
>>> Too often people think that with a simple language, the programs created
>>> with it must be simple. This is dead wrong. Simple languages lead to
>>> complex, incomprehensible programs.
>>
>> Oh, how true!
>>
>> Think at Lisp, for instance, probably one of the most simple languages
>> ever. This simplicity, precisely, forces to create tons of abstraction
>> levels just to define notions not present in the language --due to
>> simplicity-- but absolutely needed to escape too low-level programming.
>
> please elucidate?

I think Lisp is in fact rather complex.

Andrei