The abstractions and protections an API can provide are entirely fueled by the language its implementation (and its consumers) is written in, however. Is this not the case? -Ian ----- Original Message ----- From: "Grant Rettke" <[email protected]> To: "racket" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 3:42:06 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [racket] The value of a language
Hi, Hope this is on topic, if it is not a substantive contribution I apologize. I just want to share a conversation from work. Bunch of experienced developers who are all very thoughtful reached the conclusion that the most important thing in a language choice is the APIs that come with it. Basically talking through it, that is the thing that speeds up work, and people can basically "think in any language they like" and then "mentally compile it down" to whatever is the implementation language. I generally agree in a corporate environment because you do want save your customers time and therefore money and I have never tried a non-mainstream language there such that I had real evidence there is a more productive way to do things. This was the same day that I finally read about syntax/parse and was thinking about how much nicer it would be to use that than the plumbing work I had to do to get nice error reporting, so perhaps I was more struck with their observation. It was just funny to hear everybody keep saying "the language doesn't matter" because it is so different than how I think, and how I think other lispers think, and even PLT people in general. I thought this was a funny coincidence because I wanted to talk about how great syntax/parse, and well I did talk to my one buddy about it :). Best wishes, Grant -- http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/ ACM, AMA, COG, IEEE ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
