Complexity of modern tools

Quotes have a way of disappearing on you. Last week I was looking for a quote Rob Pike gave in a talk about Go, in the early days of Go. It was a quote from Richard Gabriel, from a talk he gave with Guy Steele. It was a beautiful quote and I was sad that I could not find it anymore. On YouTube one can find many talks by Rob Pike on Go, but none of the thumbnails jogged my memory.

I found the quote partially reproduced in the essay aaaa.sh on c, which I’m linking to so that it gets more eyeballs.

At last I have found the talk: Another Go at Language Design. It’s a great talk, from August 2010, less than a year after the public announcement of Go.

The quote merits a full slide in Pike’s deck:

I’m always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who’d have guessed sophistication bought such noise?

• Dick Gabriel