Editing Paul Graham (programmer) (section)

== The Blub paradox ==
<span id="Blub"></span>
Graham considers the hierarchy of [[programming language]]s with the example of ''Blub'', a hypothetically average language "right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. It is not the most powerful language, but it is more powerful than [[COBOL|Cobol]] or [[machine code|machine language]]."<ref>{{cite web |last=Graham |first=Paul |year=2001 |url=http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html |title=Beating the Averages |access-date=28 April 2007}}; published in ''[[Hackers & Painters]]'', 2004; the essay was also reprinted in [http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/people/douglass/Douglass/Agents/Lisp/psflang-report.pdf ''The Planning and Scheduling Working Group Report on Programming Languages''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110616195448/http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/people/douglass/Douglass/Agents/Lisp/psflang-report.pdf |date=16 June 2011}}, by JM Adams, R Hawkins, C Myers, C Sontag, S Speck</ref> It was used by Graham to illustrate a comparison, beyond [[Turing completeness]], of programming language power, and more specifically to illustrate the difficulty of comparing a programming language one knows to one that one does not.{{Blockquote |text=...These studies would like to formally prove that a certain language is more or less expressive than another language. Determining such a relation between languages objectively rather than subjectively seems to be somewhat problematic, a phenomenon that Paul Graham has discussed in "The Blub Paradox".<ref name="blub1">{{cite web |last=Robinson |first=D. |url=https://www.verilab.com/files/sample_chapter_verilab_aop_cookbook.pdf |title=An Introduction to Aspect Oriented Programming in e |website=Verilab |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220411061956/https://www.verilab.com/files/sample_chapter_verilab_aop_cookbook.pdf |archive-date=April 11, 2022|url-status=deviated}}</ref><ref name="blub2">{{cite web |last1=Hidders |first1=J. |last2=Paredaens |first2=J. |last3=Vercammen |first3=R. |last4=Marrara |first4=S. |url=http://www.adrem.ua.ac.be/bibrem/pubs/TR2005-05.pdf |title=Expressive power of recursion and aggregates in XQuery |website=Adrem Data Lab |publisher=University of Antwerp}}</ref>}}

Graham considers a hypothetical Blub programmer. When the programmer looks down the "power continuum", they consider the [[Machine code|lower languages]] to be less powerful because they miss some feature that a Blub programmer is used to. But when they look up, they fail to realize that they are looking up: they merely see "weird languages" with unnecessary features and assumes they are equivalent in power, but with "other hairy stuff thrown in as well". When Graham considers the point of view of a programmer using a language higher than Blub, he describes that programmer as looking down on Blub and noting its "missing" features from the point of view of the higher language.<ref name="blub1"/>

Graham describes this as ''the Blub paradox'' and concludes that "By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one."<ref name="blub1"/>

The concept has been cited by programmers such as [[Joel Spolsky]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Spolsky |first=Joel |author-link=Joel Spolsky |url=http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html |chapter=The Perils of JavaSchools |title=More Joel on Software |date=29 December 2005}}</ref>