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Mountain West Ruby 2012 Capability vs. Suitability by Gary Bernhardt

Confreaks · 21.7K views · 2012-06-05 · 19:44

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Overview

Gary Bernhardt argues that software history moves in reactions to earlier tools, and that new tools are not simply better in every way. He distinguishes capability (what a tool allows) from suitability (what it fits), and warns against repeating past mistaken reactions.

On Hacker News

HN commenters reuse the capability-versus-suitability framing to discuss languages, restriction versus freedom, and tool design.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2015–2023

Topics

Software architecture & designProgramming language design
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capability vs suitabilityprogramming languagestool designrubygary bernhardt

What people said

al2o3cr · 2023-06 · Recommendation

There was this talk ("Capability vs Sustainability") from 2012: [VIDEO] Very nearly exactly what you're describing; not sure if it's the same thing you were thinking of, or just part of a similar thought-wave at the time.

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thristian · 2015-10 · Recommendation

See also the Gary Bernhardt talk, Capability vs. Suitability: [VIDEO] Some technologies are radical new developments designed to give people some new capability they never had before. Other technologies are refinements of some previous capability technology, restricting the capabilities but more suitable for some particular problem-space or setting. It's not necessarily "nobody has big ideas anymore", it's just a natural cycle. On the other hand, if you want a less-charitable view, consider this: programming in the 1980s was dominated by ideas from C, a language developed in the 1970s. Programming in the 1990s brought the influence of Smalltalk, a language developed in the 1970s. The 2000s saw the introduction of functional programming ideas from Lisp, a language developed in the 1970s. These days, the hot new programming language features are being taken from Standard ML, a language developed in the 1970s. Someday the 1970s will be mined out, and then we can start coming up with new ideas again.

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fnord123 · 2019-07 · Reference

This really comes back to the Capability vs. Suitability model that Gary Bernhardt has spoken about: [VIDEO] IRC is capable. It is a box of nuts and bolts that lets us communicate and build awesome bots and so on. Bloating the protocol gives us suitability: features that are robust and can federate.

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Sources

Video by Confreaks, played through YouTube.

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