I often hear people praise languages, frameworks, constructs, etc. for being “explicit”. I’m trying to understand this logic. The purpose of a language, framework, etc. is to hide complexity. If it makes you specify all kinds of details explicitly, then it’s not hiding much complexity, only moving it around. What’s so great about explicitness and how do you make a language/framework/API “explicit” while still making it serve its purpose of hiding complexity?
I often hear people praise languages, frameworks, constructs, etc. for being explicit. I’m trying
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It’s not so much that explicit is good (certainly the closely-related verbose is bad) as that when implicit goes wrong, it’s so hard to tell WTF is going on.
Hack C++ for a decade or two and you’ll understand exactly what I mean.