Re: [MirageOS-devel] How to implement protocols?

[Nik Sultana <ns441@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hannes could you expand on what's meant by "Abstraction should be used 
where needed"?
I kinda agree with the second part of the quoted snippet.

For one thing, chosen abstractions are partly a matter of taste -- one 
person's abstraction is another person's abomination...
For another, abstractions are devised based on what's suitable at the 
time for a project. We have to be pragmatic.
And times change.
Abstractions should change with the times too.
I think this is what the second part of the quoted snippet refers to; 
"legacy" abstractions can be a burden, even to the original author/s.
Perhaps it might also be useful to clarify what's meant by "abstraction" 
to begin with :) The beginning of the paragraph suggests that it stands 
for function/lambda abstraction, but the end of the paragraph can be 
interpreted more broadly.
Would it be more convenient for you if feedback were provided off-list 
(in comments to the gist perhaps), or is it fine to continue discussing 
this on the mailing list?
Nik

On 2015-11-13 11:00, Daniel BÃnzli wrote:
> "Abstraction should be used where needed, keeping in mind that every
> abstraction is a burden on the reader of the program (e.g. yourself in
> 5 years)."
>
> WTF. Abstraction is what makes it easier to read and understand the
> program. That's precisely what I see missing from people doing system
> programming in OCaml. Lack of decomposition of your problem into
> well-defined denotational structures and functions. Lack of
> decomposition of the functions themselves into well defined and
> *named* subexpressions. etc.
>
> Other than that the document feels like unstructured, poorly written
> [1], random rumblings.
>
> Best,
>
> Daniel
>
> [1] E.g. "A fundamental feature of functional programming is that
> communication between functions is done via arguments and result
> values solely."
>
>
>
>
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