[PRL] Code's Worst Enemy

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Dec 29, 2007, at 3:46 PM, William D Clinger wrote:

> Matthias wrote:
>> This perspective can be criticized as not Scheme-focused enough and
>> as too disrespectful of language standards.
>
> Both respect for standards and disrespect for standards
> contribute to the general problem.  Standards of high
> technical quality contribute to the solution, and should
> be respected, but are too often ignored.  Other standards
> are part of the problem, and should be disrespected, but
> are too often followed.

I am in complete agreement with this implicitly formulated
principle. Of course, the principle does raise the question
how one can identify standards of reasonably high quality.

Note I use a relativization here because I believe that
there is no such thing as 'high quality' and 'low quality'
standard per se. In a discipline like ours, we must take
into account the economics of the situation, and that
justifies 'reasonably high' as opposed to 'high'. But I
do think we're in agreement on this, too.

-- Matthias