I only think about "Out of the Tar Pit".
Essays on programming I think about a lot
21–30 of 99 posts
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nonsense, written because Joel had never used a language with a decent type system. Any Haskell programmer uses half a dozen non-leaking abstractions before breakfast. Even the examples in the post itself don't hold up - using UDP instead of TCP doesn't actually mean your program will work any better when someone unplugs the network cable.
Interesting that you mentioned Haskell. In my experience, I've found that every type having a bottom makes a lot of abstractions leaky.
Interesting, can you give an example?
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#23So glad to see the Law of Leaky Abstractions in there - that's had a very long-running impact on how I think about programming. It's still super-relevant today, nearly 18 years after it was published. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
It's nonsense, written because Joel had never used a language with a decent type system. Any Haskell programmer uses half a dozen non-leaking abstractions before breakfast. Even the examples in the post itself don't hold up - using UDP instead of TCP doesn't actually mean your program will work any better when someone unplugs the network cable.
I think you're giving Haskell too much credit... In my experience most abstractions need to be replaced because of performance requirements - achieving lower latency, higher throughput, etc. That's the reason to go with UDP instead of TCP. Not sure if this sort of leakiness falls under what Joel had in mind though.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#24So glad to see the Law of Leaky Abstractions in there - that's had a very long-running impact on how I think about programming. It's still super-relevant today, nearly 18 years after it was published. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
It's nonsense, written because Joel had never used a language with a decent type system. Any Haskell programmer uses half a dozen non-leaking abstractions before breakfast. Even the examples in the post itself don't hold up - using UDP instead of TCP doesn't actually mean your program will work any better when someone unplugs the network cable.
I think we Haskellers have to be realistic and say that although it feels that many of our abstractions are non-leaking, they're only non-leaking in the sense that a modern, triply-glazed, thoroughly insulated house is non-leaking of heat compared to a draughty, cold house built 200 years ago. There are indeed leaks, but they are small and generally ignorable.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#25So glad to see the Law of Leaky Abstractions in there - that's had a very long-running impact on how I think about programming. It's still super-relevant today, nearly 18 years after it was published. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
I’m going through the conversation with a colleague atm where he believes DRY applies to everything.
When everything is DRY you get the Sahara Desert.
Some things should be DAMP every so often, and at regular intervals.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nonsense, written because Joel had never used a language with a decent type system. Any Haskell programmer uses half a dozen non-leaking abstractions before breakfast. Even the examples in the post itself don't hold up - using UDP instead of TCP doesn't actually mean your program will work any better when someone unplugs the network cable.
I think we Haskellers have to be realistic and say that although it feels that many of our abstractions are non-leaking, they're only non-leaking in the sense that a modern, triply-glazed, thoroughly insulated house is non-leaking of heat compared to a draughty, cold house built 200 years ago. There are indeed leaks, but they are small and generally ignorable.
I don't think that's true. A lot of these abstractions are provably correct and so simply cannot leak (and in slightly more advanced languages you might even enforce those proofs - consider Idris' VerifiedMonad and friends).
Of course if you put garbage in at the lower levels (e.g. define a monoid instance that doesn't actually commute) then you will get garbage out at the higher levels (e.g. the sum of the concatenation of two lists may no longer equal the two lists' sums added together), but that's not the abstraction leaking, that's just an error in your code.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we Haskellers have to be realistic and say that although it feels that many of our abstractions are non-leaking, they're only non-leaking in the sense that a modern, triply-glazed, thoroughly insulated house is non-leaking of heat compared to a draughty, cold house built 200 years ago. There are indeed leaks, but they are small and generally ignorable.
I don't think that's true. A lot of these abstractions are provably correct and so simply cannot leak (and in slightly more advanced languages you might even enforce those proofs - consider Idris' VerifiedMonad and friends). Of course if you put garbage in at the lower levels (e.g. define a monoid instance that doesn't actually commute) then you will get garbage out at the higher levels (e.g. the sum of the concatena…
You are abstracting over a CPU and memory. Your abstraction leaks in that memory layout actually matters for performance, for example. Or if you have a bad RAM chip.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#28So glad to see the Law of Leaky Abstractions in there - that's had a very long-running impact on how I think about programming. It's still super-relevant today, nearly 18 years after it was published. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
It's nonsense, written because Joel had never used a language with a decent type system. Any Haskell programmer uses half a dozen non-leaking abstractions before breakfast. Even the examples in the post itself don't hold up - using UDP instead of TCP doesn't actually mean your program will work any better when someone unplugs the network cable.
Is it possible that you are misinterpreting what Spolsky meant? I think he means that in the real world we interact with implementations of abstractions, and that the implementation always shines through and can bite you in the ass. This is what makes side-channel attacks possible, and (in Spolsky's view) unavoidable.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#29So glad to see the Law of Leaky Abstractions in there - that's had a very long-running impact on how I think about programming. It's still super-relevant today, nearly 18 years after it was published. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
I’m going through the conversation with a colleague atm where he believes DRY applies to everything.
Yeah that sucks. Especially when you're designing service endpoints and your colleague insists upon reusing an existing endpoint instead of opening up a new one, because the two use cases looked the same when he squinted hard enough.
Now instead of /credit-card and /debit-card, which are independently testable, debuggable and changeable, you just have /card. Can't change the debit logic in /card because it will break credit. Can't change the credit logic in /card because it will break debit.
Re: Essays on programming I think about a lot
#30Sadly it's a video/presentation, not an essay, but Simple Made Easy[1] is the single software argument that has made the most impact on me. ___ 1. https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
There is a transcript here: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...
Rich belongs to the small class of industry speakers who are both insightful and nondull. Do yourself a favour if you haven't and indulge in the full presentation.