> I think it's specious to suggest that the problems in programming language design and implementation are illusionary
That's definitely not what I was trying to suggest. I was suggesting that we do not need to accept "trade-offs" as an inherent property of programming, and that we can strive to do better. Sure, programming languages are designed within a context, but the number of inherent limitations upon us as programming language designers are fewer than those placed on real-world engineers. Gravity, mass, cost and tensile strength of certain materials are fixed constants, yet building skyscrapers and wide-body jets are a practical reality. What have we got to contend with? Incompleteness? Bah!
So my reply was not intended to say "programming language design is not hard", rather, "we should not be so quick to accept unnecessary trade-offs". The original post was complaining about problems which have been (largely) solved in other languages. The reply about seeing trade-offs implied that working around limitations is acceptable and part of an engineer's lot. I disagreed, suggesting that most of these "limitations" are imposed by limitations of thought, not limitations in what we can actually achieve.
That's definitely not what I was trying to suggest. I was suggesting that we do not need to accept "trade-offs" as an inherent property of programming, and that we can strive to do better. Sure, programming languages are designed within a context, but the number of inherent limitations upon us as programming language designers are fewer than those placed on real-world engineers. Gravity, mass, cost and tensile strength of certain materials are fixed constants, yet building skyscrapers and wide-body jets are a practical reality. What have we got to contend with? Incompleteness? Bah!
So my reply was not intended to say "programming language design is not hard", rather, "we should not be so quick to accept unnecessary trade-offs". The original post was complaining about problems which have been (largely) solved in other languages. The reply about seeing trade-offs implied that working around limitations is acceptable and part of an engineer's lot. I disagreed, suggesting that most of these "limitations" are imposed by limitations of thought, not limitations in what we can actually achieve.