Item — HN Reader

So the MIPS ISA is considered to be 'pure' RISC?

My rule of thumb: if something is conceptually "pure" instead of a complicated, carefully balanced mix of grey, its usually not worth considering.

I found this to be true for programming languages, ISAs, politics etc.

It is interesting how purity has a very strong allure - maybe our brains are naturally drawn to a reduced state of complexity, and thus energy consumption?

1 comments

> It is interesting how purity has a very strong allure - maybe our brains are naturally drawn to a reduced state of complexity, and thus energy consumption?

Or maybe complicated more often than not is just not a "carefully balanced mix of grey" but more of a clusterfuck .. and we learned to be wary of it.

Have a look at this: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

I've seen most of his talks, actually I'm a fan. I wouldn't consider Clojure to be a good example of purity though - it has both LISP purists as well as FP purists (Haskell) against it. Actually it is quite pragmatic for running on the JVM and even has optional typing.

If elegance and simplicity are achievable without making too many sacrifices, great! I'd choose Clojure over C++ any day.