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“Who Cares about Elegance?” The Role of Aesthetics in Programming Language Design

Bruce J. McLennan

[https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~bmaclenn/papers/Elegance.html]


the main analogy is structural engineering, with a parallel to Billington’s The Tower and the Bridge

according to billington, there are 3 E’s:

The design looks unbalanced if the forces are unbalanced, and the design looks stable if it is stable. By restricting our attention to designs in which the interaction of features is manifest - in which good interactions look good, and bad interactions look bad - we can let our aesthetic sense guide our design

How do you acquire this vision? Practice.