essays about the act and art of programming

# <span class="todo TODO">TODO</span> programming tax

higher level languages are built to help the programmer focus on higher
level ideas, protecting them from thinking about memory permissions,
etc. this is the case most of the time but all abstractions are at some
point leaky given our finite access to memory and compute.

javascript does not accomplish this; it merely shifts the
responsibilities of the programmer operating at lower levels of
abstraction from thinking about pointers, memory mapping, etc. to
thinking about undefined, NaN and object comparisons instead .

proper abstraction enables the programmer to think at a higher level;
javascript comes close before dragging the developer down with it

# macro notes

haskell doesnt work macros involve evaluation: running program at
compile time requires running language inside compiler places burden
inside of language implementation to make life tricky erlang vm has
always supported continuously evaluating new code, unlike haskell, which
has to have a very strange embedded interpreter to work properly! ghc
templates might work better with better multi stage compilation?

macros in ruby are interesting:
<https://www.toptal.com/ruby/ruby-metaprogramming-cooler-than-it-sounds>