It has been some time since I learned a new programming language. Perhaps Haskell has me so firmly entrenched in “desirable properties” that any new language I look at either looks like another Javascript (a decent language sullied by terrible syntax) or Smalltalk (a decent language sullied by terrible engineering). I completely admit that I have had opportunities to learn new languages that I have turned down because I didn’t find the language’s ideas aesthetically pleasing after reading about them for ten minutes. But all in all I have been unimpressed by new languages and haven’t felt inspired to learn them to the degree I would need to use them.
It has also been some time since I have been excited about programming. My readers are surely aware of this as the topics of this blog meander this way and that away from my expertise. I used to love seeking the elegant design, simmering 200 lines down into 40, hypothesizing about language features and module systems, imagining worlds in which all modern software was built upon my paradigm.
I think these two things are related. I am not sure which way the causation goes, or even if there is a causal relationship. But thinking back on my time as a programmer, the times when I was most productive I was learning: working in a new language or working in a new domain. I still think CodeCatalog is a great idea, in total a few hard weeks’ work, and I can’t convince myself to write another line of the damned thing. That’s because I know how it’s gonna go; I know what I have to do; there is no mystery to it.
What if, instead of twisting my arm and trying to force myself into “good behavior”, I embraced this aspect of myself? There has to be some beautiful experimental kernel to that project; there has to be some beautiful way to express it. And it is certainly possible, even likely, that the result won’t end up looking and feeling like StackOverflow or Google Whatever (beta).
So what?
Have I been so brainwashed by the business of software that I will abandon a project because I cannot inspire myself to bring it to business standards? I think it’s because we wanted to make money. It would be nice not to have to worry about paying rent, I admit, but not worth exchanging for the beauty of an inspired work of code.
Someone invent a beautiful web/database language. I mean beautiful and unique — not practical or productive or real-world or familiar or interoperable or scalable. I don’t care about those adjectives, those are for engineers.
