I had to deal with it, when I hadto parse Transac-SQL code, and it's not handy. Very difficult to have a single executable file containing everything, it needs a whole subtree.
OCaml is easier with Opam and ocamlbuild tools.
I use to write complex SQL query very usually, and I can say that it's far more concise than imperative code.
Compared to it's own semantics, SQL is actually verbose, but its semantics is so powerful that you gain size.
Please share how many lines of sql it will take to statistically normalize multiple columns. Or even something simple like null cleaning columns based on dynamic thresholds.
I think most of the problems come from insufficient semantic power of actual language. Most programming language, even the most advanced don't manage time, don't manage locality, and don't fit in the brain representation human makes of the code.
It's remarkably explained by Blackwell in his paper "Metaphors we Program By: Space, Action and Society in Java"
https://www.ppig.org/papers/2006-ppig-18th-blackwell/
So frameworks try to manage this gap, and the only solution, IMO, is to invent language that integrate more advanced semantics to avoid the necessity of frameworks
15 years ago I had the lighnight idea to interview my grandfather who join the french resistance during the WWII. I interviewed him about the life before the war, in the country and his experience during the war, when he had to become clandestine in his own country because he didn't joined the mandatory german working program (STO). It's the most concrete thing we keep from him, and I just regret I didn't interview him more.
There's an interesting language strongly influenced by Self : Lisaac ( http://www.lisaac.org ). Lisaac is a purely prototype language extending the Self's prototype paradigm with extremely good performance (close to C code, biggest part of the research around this language was about high performance code generated by the compiler).
For instance, you can define a dynamic inheritance : your inheritance can be defined by a function which return an object - so, a prototype - among several.
The author of this language explain me that Self was one of the most important day in his life ;-)
Using MagnetoHydroDynamic, you can. You just have to use parietal Engine invented by Jean-Pierre Petit in 1975[1].
With this technology you can fly at Mach 8, easily..
Every programmers should know something about memory, because software are becoming bloat [1] [2] because of a new generation of programmers who doesn't optimize their code.
So, of course, you had a wonderful career, but it doesn't prove that you write efficient code
It really all comes down to what variable one is trying to optimize. I noticed neither article mentioned money as a possible variable to optimize. Here is another take to consider:
"In 1993, given the cost of hard drives in those days, Microsoft Excel 5.0 took up about $36 worth of hard drive space.
In 2000, given the cost of hard drives in 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000 takes up about $1.03 in hard drive space.
In real terms, it’s almost like Excel is actually getting smaller!"
That's true, but I don't see how it's relevant to this article. We can simply tell people "Write your programs so they use fewer resources, and they will run faster".
Reading a paragraph like this:
> "The CAS signal can be sent after tRCD (RAS-to-CAS Delay) clock cycles. The column address is then transmitted by making it available on the address bus and lowering the CAS line."
is certainly interesting but it offers no additional insight in to how to write an efficient program. Regardless of whether the row and column addresses are sent on the same bus or a different bus, the optimization strategies for programmers are exactly the same. The same goes for almost all of the information here.
Unless you're writing a kernel, 99% of this article is overkill. I mean that literally: it's over 100 pages long, and I think the important and relevant points for most programmers could be summarized in a page or two.
Is it better for my company if the software is delayed to market by 6 months because we were writing the most optimal code possible in low-level languages gaining us 5% more speed on our application?
Most programmers are working for a business whose goal is to make money. Usually that involves adding more features or producing the product faster (as in development time). As far as optimal or efficient goes, all the company cares about is: "Is it fast enough so that people still buy/use the product?"
Premature optimization is wasteful, both a waste of time and money. Unless you're doing it for fun, trying to eke out 1ms on a website load at the cost of excessive dev time and risk of bugs, is just silly.
Don't forget, trying to make super optimal code often introduces bugs as you now have code that is more complex and/or uses more low level constructs. I've seen many deadlocks and race conditions due to engineers trying to optimize code unnecessarily.
More than premature pessimization? Setting your project performance goals is plain good design. It's not premature optimization to suggest that your web server should be able to respond to queries within an average window of time. Working with any kind of service level object and agreement practically requires you to think about these goals at the design phase regardless.
I've come across teams with engineers who couldn't understand why their application was timing out. They had no idea how to work with data structures and memory layout to optimize access. Their response to business stakeholders was to weakly raise their hands to the ceiling and say, "It can't be fixed." Their customers would not have been happy with that answer; they had precious data and reports to deliver.
It's worth knowing, at least on a conceptual level, how memory architectures and data structures affect performances. Otherwise you end up paying people like me a lot of money. And you don't want that.
Some years ago, I had to write program that extract a foot pressure platform for an orthopedist, and I had to do it with a closed-source Delphi API.
Delphi was already old at that time and difficult to find.
I though about Lazarus and it works perfectly with the Delphi blob file.
It's a very great tool.
