Comment by kaba0
4 years ago
Hi, level 1 and 2 looks really cool, but I may not understand the point of only having these languages “running” on a computer? Both 2 and 3 are interpreted and the interpreter is the area you want to minimize?
What about a program written in 3 that can compile to either 1 or 2? Why would it hurt anything to have a different language somehow made possible to run here?
I'm not sure I follow your question, but the idea is that the computer the end user receives has a single opinionated language for programming it. Kinda like Basic for microcomputers. The end user is of course welcome to build their own languages. That is encouraged! But multiple languages make the computer more difficult for others to comprehend. My goal is to convince you that, all things being equal, a computer with fewer languages is in your best interest. Less code, fewer bugs, fewer security holes.
(Level 2 is not interpreted, it's compiled. Skipping level 2 would be totally in line with my principle above. But it would be more painful, I think. You'd basically be programming in machine code.)
My question is regarding why would a single language codebase be easier to comprehend/have fewer bugs, security holes? In terms of a single program it makes sense, but I seldom read the source code of a library for example I depend on - if it has a good public API, it could be written in anything for all I care.
Not trying to dismiss the idea at all, just I don’t yet see “the light”, so to say.
Yeah, these are good questions and to be fair your questions are shared by many.
My basic worldview is that we need to have 100-1000x more people reading and auditing open source. The original value of open source was in the ability of people to read the source. If we don't use that ability then we don't really get the benefit.
The world today focuses on APIs and ignores implementation. I would argue that's the biggest source of problems today, with security holes, data breaches, user-hostile UX and so on.
If you accept that being able to read sources matters, hopefully it makes sense why reducing the number of languages matters. Every new language you add is more code to read, another language to learn and become proficient in, a new source of gotchas and subtleties to spend 10 years learning. Another set of tools, another set of moving parts that might not build on your computer because of some subtle version mismatch.
It's a hard problem. So let's make it easier for ourselves by relying on fewer languages, and being more thoughtful about the dependencies we introduce into our projects.
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