The Case for LEGO-Like Software Building Blocks Over Advanced Type Systems
By
mpweiher
A baker's-dozen of insight crammed into one ring.
Summary
The article argues that the software development community is overly focused on advancing type systems (like dependent types and effect systems) at the expense of practical composability. The author contends that functional programming, despite its mathematical elegance, fails to deliver true LEGO-like composability in software. Instead, the article advocates for developing better building blocks and substrates that enable more modular, composable software development, comparing the ideal to LEGO parts that can be easily combined and reused.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe smartest people in our field are digging in the wrong direction.
We don't need smarter types. We need a better substrate for building composable software. We need LEGO parts.
Functional programming, despite its elegant mathematics and appealing purity, is a dead end when it comes to achieving true LEGO-like composability in software.
While brilliant minds burrow ever deeper into type systems—adding dependent types, effect systems, and increasingly sophisticated type-level programming—we're missing the forest for the trees.
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