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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

paraphrasing Russ Ackoff, intelligent people don't aim to solve problems but to dissolve them, and the best way to do this is to build whatever it is you're building on excellent tools. We would have significantly fewer problems in the world of software if people started paying attention to the quality and mastery of their tools.

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The issue is that programmers often focus on the aesthetic aspects of their tools. They like smalltalk and lisp because they are somehow elegant and beautiful. However this is a red herring. The only metric that should be considered is how effective the tool is for solving the problem. Discerning between utility and aesthetics of a tool is an essential skill for any programmer to learn

No one brought up aesthetics except for you.

Yes, I know

Speaking for myself, utility plays a big role in how I perceive a tool in terms of aesthetics. It's not only about a language's grammar fitting in a business card and stuff like that.

Python and JavaScript are two languages that have been used for stuff they are obviously unsuitable for, at a vast scale.

Can you give an example of something Python has been used for that it’s not suitable for?

Scientific computing. I can't just write a "for" loop and expect it to perform. I have to use whatever is provided by packages which weren't written in it, or make a similar package myself.

I can't imagine any technical reason for this situation. Only perceived convenience and some kind of social dynamics.

I liked Smalltalk because the language implementation provided source code for all the IDE tools: examples of how to build rich GUIs when that was new.

I liked Smalltalk because I could watch people working with a prototype and learn how to transform the work they were doing.

I liked Smalltalk with ENVY/Developer because I could see when someone created new unreleased editions of methods on classes that I'd changed, talk with them, resolve clashes, merge and release, in a tight development cycle.

> Russ Ackoff

Which book of his should I start with? Thanks for the reference.

The Art of Problem Solving is a good start given that most of his other work is more management oriented. But if you want an introduction to his kind of thinking, Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows is fantastic as well.

Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, I'm familiar with Thinking in Systems and other systems thinkers but for whatever reason haven't read anything from Ackoff.

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