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Frankenprogramming
David Barbour throws down the gauntlet to John Shutt in an already interesting and entertaining ("about as coherent as a 90 day weather forecast") LtU thread:
John Shutt would like to break the chains of semantics, e.g. using fexprs to reach under-the-hood to wrangle and mutate the vital organs of a previously meaningful subprogram. Such a technique is workable, but I believe it leads to monolithic, tightly coupled applications that are not harmonious with nature. I have just now found a portmanteau that properly conveys my opinion of the subject: frankenprogramming.
I'm looking forward to John's reply. In the meantime, I have to say that I like to view this in a more relaxed way. As Ehud Lamm said:Strict abstraction boundaries are too limiting in practice. The good news is that one man's abstraction breaking is another's language feature.
4 comments:
I do so love a good PL smackdown. Fexprs do seem like ultimate power manifest, but sometimes there can be such a thing as too much power.
Not in the world of Lisp.
We should remind ourselves that Edward Van Halen's building of the frankenstrat [1] led to a new age of superstrat [2] heavy metal guitars in the 80s. Perhaps that holds a valuable lesson for Shutt's Kernel and for us in software . . . somehow . . .
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstrat
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstrat#Genesis.2C_custom_modifications
Teeheehee...
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