Flipping The Bozo Bit

Christoph and Keith explore the intersection between the technological bedrock we take as given when we develop software systems, such as operating systems, TCP/IP networks, files, automatic memory management (and maybe even HTTP), and the free floating ideas we have before we ever write a line of code. Say ‘technological bedrock’ represents constraints (or the reality) you can’t change, and ideas represent imaginitive worlds you want to bring into being. If that’s the case, then programming languages become the means by which you move from imagination to reality. They’re artistic materials: the raw stuff out of which a representation is made. If so, why do language developers (and perhaps more earnestly, language users) insist on hardening languages to a sub-set of possibilities? This language requires built-in unit tests, that one doesn’t. The one over there insists that everything is an object, while this one insists that everything is a value. Finally, we have a langu