Iota

[Paul Backus]

On Friday, 5 August 2022 at 17:03:35 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> If your language only has low level primitives that can build 
> up everything, then there is an additional cost for users to 
> figure out how those things combine. Higher level API (or more 
> generality) can help reduce the cost that users face, but also 
> have a trade-off by making the code base more difficult to 
> maintain, etc. What you're suggesting puts all the cost on the 
> user. I would argue that there is a trade-off, such that it 
> makes sense in some places to offer higher level API for common 
> use cases.

Yes, absolutely. I'm not trying to suggest that we shouldn't have 
high-level APIs. I'm trying to suggest that our high-level APIs 
should be the product of conscious design choices, rather than 
gradual accretion of special cases (a.k.a. "generality creep").