Writing for people, not machines

I admit it: I hate assembler. I hate C, C++, and most everything else other people consider “programming languages.” They are glorified switch-flipping on the front panel of a PDP-8e that we no longer have sitting in front of us. They are tuned for the benefit of the computer, and honestly, as an arrogant fool , I find my time infinitely more valuable. Computers are servants. Technology must bend to my will, not the other way around. That’s just the way I am.

So, it is with great glee that I find the resurgence of discussions about more advanced programming languages.
Continually, I have reminded people that talented developers are expensive, CPU cycles are asymptotically approaching free. They are not being “wasted” when we burn them to make the developer’s life easier—we are freeing his own cycles to contemplate better algorithms, more advanced approaches, more adaptive reasoning.

I still remember the first time I ran into LISP in a high-performance computing environment. This was in the days when Cray ruled the world of supercomputers, and every cycle was expensive. Some of the fastest programs ever written for a Cray supercomputer came out of their LISP compiler. Why? Because the algorithm could be the focus of the intellectual power of the developer, and not bit-twiddling. It was a shock, and yet logical all at once.

And that’s the thing. We live in the real-world, and that world is swimming in CPU cycles, memory, and un-tapped resources of our systems. Use them. Don’t waste your time worrying about saving 1 cycle when it means the real problems go unsolved. You might find out that, by focusing on the underlying problem, that the solution comes sooner, with more certainty, and thorugh more interesting work.

These observations to me also apply to Smalltalk and other “research languages,” that people dismiss as “interesting,” but not fast enough. Ruby is another such beast, as is Python, or even Perl—trading “performance” for expressiveness. Worry about “performance,” in it’s myopic traditional measure, when, if you solve the underlying problem first.

Fill your tool-belt with all the tools you need to solve the problem. You might be able to build the Taj Mahal with a pair of dental tweezers and an ice-pick, but it sure won’t be much fun.If in doubt consult with the chief architect of Shah Jahan :)