alt Hacker NewsWhile there is certainly some amount of unnecessary junk code out there, your claim that it could be reduced by an order of magnitude isn't even close to correct. In general the only way to write less code is to use higher level abstractions. The problem, of course, is that those abstractions are always leaky and using them tends to make certain required features too slow or even impossible to build at all. There is no free lunch.
as programmers we like to use all this jargon like "leaky abstraction", but never bothered to understsand it beyond the PL paradigms we use. There's no formal definition and simply makes them good terms to abuse, and throw in conversations to make our points.
Why are the abstractions leaky? Are all abstractions leaky? Why - we simply accept the situation without spending any real effort.
"There's no free lunch" - this is representative of the level of argument in software circles entirely. But WTF does that mean? If the lunch is not free, how cheap or expensive can it get and why?
This is why, as engineers, we tend to brush off the Dijkstras as arrogant, while at the same time ignoring both our arrogance and ignorance.