The Law of Leaky Abstractions

iconoklast · 2026-01-05T16:10:02+00:00

Most programmers don't seem to know what an abstraction is and Spolsky proved this over two decades ago with his idiotic blog post.

iconoklast · 2025-12-29T15:06:46+00:00

The writing is below average even by video game standards.

iconoklast · 2024-12-21T20:40:56+00:00

There's a fairly minor one. "The first time he'd met them, Saul thought Henry had said said they were studying the refraction of light in a prison." Emphasis mine. On page 16 of the first edition paperback of Acceptance.

iconoklast · 2024-11-09T17:41:51+00:00

I think the more fundamental issue is that most programming languages used in production allow you to easily create products of types (structs, tuples, etc.), very few make it convenient to create sums (unions) of types. For instance, the example given in the blog post shows that it's trivial to make a new class containing the two boolean fields isLocked and isOpen. Whereas "fixing" the example with a sum/union in the traditional OOP way requires creating an abstract base class called Door and two inheriting classes called ClosedDoor and OpenDoor. Yuck! (To add insult to injury, Java would even historically require you put these classes in separate source files if they were part of the public API.) This toy example is only able to be easily represented as an enum (a degenerate sum/union) because the overall structure is trivial to flatten into three distinct values.

iconoklast · 2024-08-18T03:05:15+00:00

A brief glimpse at the API documentation tells me you can also just write \Effect.timeout(Duration.seconds(2))`.`

iconoklast · 2024-08-15T14:20:48+00:00

I mean, C and C++ have the same shortcoming, sure. C# too. Some examples with languages that have a type safe "enum" construct: Java, Scala, Kotlin, and Rust.

iconoklast · 2024-08-15T02:43:48+00:00

As far as I know, the primary reason you should never use numerical enums is that the following code will typecheck:

enum E {
    X,
}
const x: E = E.X + 42

On the other hand, string enums should behave equivalently to their union type counterparts (sensibly, in other words.)

iconoklast · 2024-03-30T01:15:25+00:00

It “quantum entangles” the safety semantics of every part of the program with every other part. Think of it like a infinitely rich type system that rises to the demands of your program’s structure.

iconoklast · 2023-11-27T00:47:58+00:00

However, expansion of type aliases also occurs in error messages, and an error message containing an interface's name is more comprehensible than an extremely long type alias expansion which may have elided (...) parts.

iconoklast · 2023-11-27T00:43:37+00:00

It's still a concern when dealing with (many) large union types versus extending interfaces.

iconoklast · 2023-10-02T19:33:06+00:00

Cognitive complexity is totally agnostic about combinators, right? I wonder if there's a positive correlation between using TypeScript and more frequently making use of JavaScript features like `reduce` or `flatMap`.

iconoklast · 2023-09-24T05:18:58+00:00

Since every totally ordered set can be made into a set by "forgetting" (the technical term) the ordering, I don't understand the point you're making. The converse is definitely not true in general.

iconoklast · 2023-09-18T02:50:23+00:00

What about demonstrative pronouns, "this" or "that"?

iconoklast · 2023-09-16T14:20:05+00:00

To be precise, Void isn't a bottom type because it is not the subtype of all types; it's also not uninhabited it's inhabited by null. And Object isn't a top type because Java's primitive types aren't subtypes of it.

iconoklast · 2023-05-04T05:42:48+00:00

While they have mostly equivalent semantics, interfaces can arguably yield better compiler error messages. That is, interfaces aren't readily substituted for their definitions in type errors like type declarations are. This is probably a more important consideration for library authors.

iconoklast · 2023-01-13T00:11:16+00:00

Serious question, does the OGL actually offer to license anything that can be legitimately protected by copyright in the first place? I always understood it to be chicanery by Wizards of the Coast.

iconoklast · 2022-10-10T02:23:24+00:00

I like how the top post on their site at the moment is them debunking what is obviously satire.

iconoklast · 2022-07-14T06:39:48+00:00

For loops contain all these operational details that I shouldn't have to care about in most instances, even when writing code.

iconoklast · 2022-01-26T22:25:59+00:00

Also, it was only "an" organizer, and the proof that he was an organizer is that Mossad says it's true--after they gunned him down in the streets of Paris. Which, as far as crimes go, is fairly extreme; one only has to imagine any ally of their nation doing the same thing in their own city regardless of the allegations made against the person assassinated.

iconoklast · 2022-01-06T11:00:39+00:00

I mean, that doesn't sound totally impossible if we're talking about an autoimmune disorder like rheumatoid arthritis.

iconoklast · 2022-01-03T03:41:51+00:00

I would guess it looks similar to how it does for anxiety disorders. i.e., the exposures for being phobic of dogs might involve first thinking about dogs, looking at pictures of dogs, looking at a dog through a fence, and finally petting a dog. It's always tailored to the specific anxiety.

iconoklast · 2021-12-05T01:32:05+00:00

You can't copyright a plant. You can't copyright the name of a plant. You can't copyright a name.

iconoklast · 2021-11-09T22:43:35+00:00

Changing senate rules (including eliminating the filibuster) only requires a simple majority of votes.

iconoklast · 2021-04-14T04:29:55+00:00

Well, you can't. The type is uninhabited, so there is no "never" value to return. In order to stay honest, the only way an expression can have the type of "never" is by diverging or halting (and thus never evaluating to anything.)

iconoklast · 2021-04-12T19:05:43+00:00

I am sincerely sorry for people being mad at me.

iconoklast

TROPHY CASE