Alan Kay wrote:
Hi Loup
Very good question -- and tell your Boss he should support you!
Cool, thank you for your support.
[…] One general argument is
that "non-machine-code" languages are POLs of a weak sort, but are more
effective than writing machine code for most problems. (This was quite
controversial 50 years ago -- and lots of bosses forbade using any
higher level language.)
I didn't thought about this historical perspective. I'll keep that in
mind, thanks.
Companies (and programmers within) are rarely rewarded for saving costs
over the real lifetime of a piece of software […]
I think my company is. We make custom software, and most of the time
also get to maintain it. Of course, we charge for both. So, when we
manage to keep the maintenance cheap (less bugs, simpler code…), we win.
However, we barely acknowledge it: much code I see is a technical debt
waiting to be paid, because the original implementer wasn't given the
time to do even a simple cleanup.
An argument that resonates with some bosses is the "debuggable
requirements/specifications -> ship the prototype and improve it" whose
benefits show up early on.
But of course. I should have thought about it, thanks.
[…] one of the most important POLs to be worked on are
the ones that are for making POLs quickly.
This why I am totally thrilled by Ometa and Maru. I use them to point
out that programming languages can be much cheaper to implement than
most think they are. It is difficult however to get past the idea that
implementing a language (even a small, specialized one) is by default a
huge undertaking.
Cheers,
Loup.
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