[kragen]

I often conceptualize programming as a two-dimensional continuum, with Alan Kay on one dimension — flexibility, interactivity, composability, exploration — and Edsger Dijkstra on the other — correctness, efficiency, simplicity. We always need a certain amount of each virtue to make our systems: without enough EWD, we can't get them to work at all, and without enough AK, what they do isn't worthwhile.

Many design choices, of course, involve trading off one virtue against another. But that hardly seems to matter when so many of our current systems are so far from the efficient frontier where tradeoffs are necessary!