A Possible Future of Software Development

What people said

adamnemecek · 2017-08 · Recommendation

They make code reuse possible. Watch this Sean Parent video [VIDEO] where he estimates that if Photoshop was rewritten using generics, the code size would go from 3,000,000 LOC to 30,000 LOC. You are right, during compilation, generics are specialized so you end up with code, however going all in on generics removes a lot of accidental complexity.

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wwweston · 2013-09 · Recommendation

"Ask any C++ guru and they will tell you: avoid mutation, avoid side effects, don’t use loops, avoid class hierarchies and inheritance. But you will need strict discipline and total control over your collaborators to pull that off because C++ is so permissive. "Haskell is not permissive, it won’t let you — or your coworkers — write unsafe code. Yes, initially you’ll be scratching your head trying to implement something in Haskell that you could hack in C++ in 10 minutes. If you’re lucky, and you work for Sean Parent or other exceptional programmer, he will code review your hacks and show you how not to program in C++." For those who aren't familiar with Parent, watch this talk: [VIDEO] which introduced me to Stepanov's "Elements of Programming" and the idea that I could be working with better/more reliable/provable abstractions in C++. That said... after a few weeks of shallowly digesting the material, I started thinking pretty much like Milewski says above: it's great if I can learn to write better C++, but if what I really want is to escape from its specific dangers and general common programming pitfalls, something like Haskell seems like a better bet.

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adamnemecek · 2019-07 · Reference

This book is really good, really dense but the ideas have inspired a generation. In this video, Sean Parent, at the time working at Adobe on Photoshop, estimated that if PS codebase followed ideas from this book, the codebase could be reduced from 3,000,000 LOC to 30,000 LOC. [VIDEO]

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