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Correctness and Complexity (github.io)
4 points by shader 1361 days ago | 2 comments


2 points by shader 1361 days ago | link

I haven't read this yet, but it looks relevant to some of our past discussions.

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2 points by shader 1361 days ago | link

After reading it, it doesn't focus as much on the practical aspects of complexity vs correctness in software, but does rather thoroughly cover the theory behind the problem.

I got it from a HN thread about the safety of Zig vs Rust (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537693)

From that context, the main idea that I'm thinking about is the tradeoff between "correctness" and "complexity" in an application or language.

That is, you could add complexity (language features, tools, architecture) to ensure some kinds of correctness, but that complexity adds risks of its own.

So, is it better to have a simpler language that doesn't have as many guarantees but is easier to understand and iterate with (Zig), or a more complex language that has more guarantees but at the cost of program complexity and slower builds? (Rust and Haskell)

This is the discussion that I thought y'all would be interested in.

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