Dan42

A long time ago, around the time Joel Spolsky was the top programming blog, I read an article that split programming languages (or was it programmers?) between "enabling" and "restricting". Or they may have used slightly different words.

But basically, "enabling" languages are about giving a lot of power to the programmer and trusting him to use it right. Today it's exemplified by the Rails doctrine of "provide sharp knives" except the article I read predated that manifesto by a few years.

And "restricting" languages were about protecting the programmer from himself, enforcing strict interfaces, strict private/public, and in general restricting/guiding the programmer to the way that is considered correct design by the language. IIRC this was exemplified by Java.

Has anyone read or remember something like that?