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by vorg 2966 days ago
> no cop outs with "I use {bolt-on sub-language that makes parent language more concise}" (that's not a mainstream language then)

Why is "I use {bolt-on} that makes {parent language} more concise" a cop out? The bolt-on could be a macro language or an IDE that does collapsing of common patterns. If it makes it easier to find a bug in a 100-line function in the parent language, or to not generate those bugs in the first place, then the {bolt-on} isn't a cop out.
1 comments
ethbro 2965 days ago
Because I believe language stability is proportional to number of users.

Would I use a new transpiler for a toy personal project? Absolutely! Would I use it for an enterprise codebase that's going to live 10-15 years? No way!

If you accept that every mapping is less than perfect (e.g. source -> assembly, vm -> underlying hardware, transpiler source -> target), then it follows that each additional mapping increases impedance.

And impedance bugs are always of the "tear apart and understand the entire plumbing, then fix bug / add necessary feature."

When I'm on a deadline, I'm not going near that sort of risk.

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vorg 2965 days ago
I see "transpilers" as being on a continuum ranging from IDE collapse comments and collapse blocks at one end, to full code generation syntax macros at the other end. There's a sweet spot in the middle where the productivity gains from terser code outweigh the impedance risk.
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