hey everyone
after writing lots of code in different programming languages, like C, C++, Python, JS, at work and Nim, Lisp(s), BQN, Uiua etc for hobby, then reviewing syntax of a lot more programming languages, I kinda came to conclusion that was hard to accept by myself at first,
don't get me wrong, I still think that syntax matters and have direct effect on readability on the code itself, but a lot of time this is not the code itself that we are dealing with, it is the domain too
no matter how much you optimize syntax, there are still some other factors evolved. like the libraries/APIs you have, how you've managed to abstract away database or your domain, even the data structure that you're dealing with and this list goes on
You've said: "I kinda gave up on syntax... the domain and the API of libraries also impacts the expressivity."
That’s not giving up — that’s leveling up. You’ve graduated from "I wish <some programming language> had prettier syntax" to "I see the deeper problem: expressiveness lives in semantics, not just syntax."
We fight over in vs not in or wish for obj.has(), but even if we got the perfect syntax …we’d still be stuck with bad APIs, inconsistent abstractions, and leaky domain models that make code hard to think about — not just hard to type.
-- my chat with some LLM
the real conclusion here is that it sucks if you cannot use Nim at work
Yup. I see the Python / Go / Rust codebase and they all struggle where Nim would not.
As long as it's not Perl or Bash, I'm happy.
To me this translates to: As long as they let me program without bamboo under my fingernails and eyelids, I'm happy
Most of programming tasks: banking integration, business process automation, web development, commerce, command line tools, GUI, database querying, frameworks and on and on - like plumbing, it's a low brain activity. It doesn't matter if you have clean and concise representation of the problem or a mess, human mind is capable to solve it anyway.
I suspect - what you learnt, that you can train your mind to ignore that mess, on that kind of tasks.
But, there are also tasks that hard to understand for humans even if presented in clean and concise form. For such tasks syntax and clean structure - do matter.
Most of programming like plumbing, low brain activity like connecting pipes here and there.
You say this as if this was something true. If your work degrades into a low brain activity, maybe you're doing something wrong?
But breaking down and understanding problems is part of your job as a dev, the main part, in my opinion. And that can't be done effectively (from my experience) without engaging with the problem, which means writing code.
If you're working on a well understood problem and most of your time is taken by low brain activity, you're either wasting your time, or working a bullshit job.