Clojure Gazette 154: Parentheses, Interactivity, Speaking

Parentheses, Interactivity, Speaking

Issue 154 - December 14, 2015

Hi Clojurists,

One of my pet peeves is the cliche "use the best tool for the job". It's often thrown out as a resolution to endless debates like "what programming language is best?" And indeed it does stop the debate. It is interpreted as a high-minded and pragmatic perspective that transcends the petty grumblings of language fans.

But instead of seeing it as an enlightened perspective, I hate it. It doesn't bring resolution to a debate. It kills discourse while providing very little new insight. "Use the best tool for the job" merely displaces the issue from "the best language" to "the best language for some job x".

There's a little insight there: identify the job before trying to find the best language for it. But this rarely happens. What usually happens is the discussion ends, the participants scurry off with the same guilty feelings associated with counting angels on pinheads.

Is there some hypothetical best language? I don't think so. But the discussions are fruitful. While we may not come to a conclusion, we do wrestle with important issues. What qualities make languages better or worse? What role do practical concerns, like ease of learning and availability of libraries, play in the choice? And what do we do with Turing completeness, the everpresent trump in these kinds of debates?

I am thankful for having engaged in these kinds of discussions. And I still enthusiastically dive in with a spirit of inquiry. My studies of programming languages and the history of computing have only deepened my appreciation for the wonder of the relationships between syntax and semantics and data structure and computation. Through these discussions, we can exchange our wonders. And when someone mentions "best tool for the job", I can't help but feel sorry for them.

The speaker has disengaged from history and creative inquiry. Weren't the programming languages we have now created by people who found no suitable tool for a job? Or perhaps the job only came about because the tool was created! And obviously there will be different tools, and different jobs, in the future. Who will create them? Certainly not someone more concerned with matching up tools to jobs than discovering deeper principles at work.

Please keep inquiring and, yes, enjoy the issue.

Rock on!

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