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by pvg 3045 days ago
As they're both Turing-complete

The moment you trot that out, you lose your 'but your analogy is terrible' privileges by default, however terrible my analogy is.

1 comments

How so?
Because more or less everything is Turing-complete. Your mom is probably Turing-complete. 'Your mom' is a pithy but lousy argument.
> "Because more or less everything is Turing-complete."

If you understand what it means, then you'd know that it means that all programming languages are comparable, from assembly to Haskell, in the sense they can all be used to do the same job. Therefore, requesting a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of two programming languages is not a foolish request. The point of such a request is to find out where it makes sense to use a particular language. To give another example, let's say someone asks if it's a good idea to write a web server in assembly or in Go. It's certainly possible in either, but in order to explore what the best choice is then further discussion is required. Comparing a Dremel to a plasma cutter is an attempt to shut down this discussion, which doesn't help in furthering the knowledge of the participants.

If you understand what it means, then you'd know that it means that all programming languages are comparable

I think this is where we strongly diverge and I resent, a bit, your implication that because I don't buy into this I somehow 'don't understand what it means'. I understand what it means. I just think it's plainly ridiculous.

> "I just think it's plainly ridiculous."

You compared a Dremel to a plasma cutter as a way to explain the differences between Python and Rust, how is that any less ridiculous?

It’s an analogy and like most analogies it’s imperfect. My point was and remains that a really bad argument (“everything is Turing-complete!”) is not much of a critique of that or really any analogy. Because it’s so obviously shallow and bad.