Our tools shape our languages, and our programs

Our applications are shaped by many forces: budget, available talent, time, languages, and tools.

When designing applications, languages are sometimes overlooked. Yet it should be obvious to anyone who has used multiple languages. Different languages have different capabilities. C and its descendants have the notions of pointers, something absent in COBOL, Fortran, and BASIC. The notion of pointers lets one build dynamic, complex data structures; such structures are not possible in pointerless languages.

Our tools have an effect on our languages, which can have an effect on our applications.

In the Microsoft world, C# is a simple language, yet the .NET framework of classes is complex and wordy. A simple application in C# requires a significant amount of typing, and a moderately complex application requires a large amount of typing.

Languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby require less typing. How is it that the .NET framework is so complex? The answer, I believe is in Visual Studio.

Microsoft's development environment is the result of competition and years (decades?) of development. Over that time, Microsoft has added features: debugging, test case management, design documents, and editing features. One significant editing feature is the auto-completion of typing with context-sensitive information. When I am typing a C# program and I start typing a name of a variable, Visual Studio gives me a list of existing variable names. (It also knows that the declaration of a variable is different from the use of a variable, and does not prompt me with existing names.) Visual Studio also lists methods for objects and provides templates for parameters.

This assistance from Visual Studio reduces the burden of typing. Thus, applications that use the .NET framework can appear wordy, but the effort to create them is less than it appears. (Some have argued that the assistance from Visual Studio helps reduce errors, as it suggests only valid possibilities.)

Thus, a development tool can affect our languages (and class frameworks), which in turn can affect our applications. When choosing our tools, we should be aware of their properties and how they can affect our projects.