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0 pointsFaark6y ago0 comments

> It's really disheartening to see that the best minds of the generation are busy spending time to reinvent the same old things instead of trying to improve upon the existing systems.

I hear that often in regard of programming languages. But I see a lot of value in remixing a lot of existing ideas in a new package. A wheel can only be so round and its interaction with the road is quite simple, but tech is different. Systems have widely different requirements. Old implementations have shortcomings and a hard time fixing those, especially due to backwards compatibility of complex systems. I cannot imagine how hard is to remove null from an existing programming language, as C# is currently trying. At some point it's just easier to start from a clean slate.

Is all the effort worth it? I don't know. But I wouldn't want to imply they are just doing it because their out of touch with reality.

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TheCoelacanth6y ago

Applying the "reinventing the wheel" meme to scenarios like this kind of misses that wheels actually have been reinvented numerous times resulting in major advancements in wheel technology.

Reinventing the wheel takes a lot of effort to be worth doing, because it takes a lot of effort to improve foundational technology, but it is sometimes worth doing if you are going to put an appropriate level of resources into it.

manigandham6y ago

With proper versioning, I don't see why even major features like that would be a problem.

Null removal is completely compile-time anyway so it's complicated to compile but relatively simple to implement as a language upgrade at a certain version, and in this case it's also opt-in.

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