Why does the Interpreter Pattern suck?

Question

In Steve Yegge's review of Design Patterns, he calls the Interpreter Pattern an "in-joke". He goes on to talk about how the perception of compilers have changed, yet how interpreted languages are still s*** on, although I can't see how this ties into the pattern.

Anyone want to enlighten this ignorant student?

Wait, the question isn't "does the interpreter pattern suck?", it's "why does Yegge think the interpreter pattern sucks?" They are two completely different questions. — Mike Douglas, Feb 01 '09 at 22:00

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 31 '09 at 06:24

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That was irony :) Everybody loves interpreted languages nowadays but 10 years earlier people just thought they are too slow for anything practical. Much like today most of people thinks about static vs. dynamic typing.

edited Jan 31 '09 at 06:24

Jonathan Leffler

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answered Jan 31 '09 at 03:53

vava

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Thanks. Guess my sarcasm detector is broken today. – Mike Douglas Jan 31 '09 at 03:56

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 20 '09 at 00:29

The INTERPRETER pattern sucks because it's a codification of Greenspun's tenth rule:

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

This was stated in 1993. A modern addendum might include C++ and Java.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '11 at 13:42

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He loves it according to this: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.html.

answered Feb 04 '11 at 13:42

Shane

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Why does the Interpreter Pattern suck?

3 Answers3

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