Yes but it's minimizing the complexity of the cliff. The original author they were responding to was describing the static/dynamic discrepancy, and how it requires a lot of work.
The author I was replying points out how simple the syntax is. But that's missing the point. I provided a direct counter example:
Adding a new compiler to bazel is very complicated, and by new compiler I include something as simple as asserting "all of my C++ code is c++17" at a project level is (when done the correct way, and not one of the many hacky prone to failure ways) a 100+ line toolchain definition (because C++17 should be treated as an entirely new compiler from the perspective of bazel; treating it as a command line argument gets you in a bad place where you hit weird errors).
To draw an analogy, it's like saying that C++ code like:
some_matrix[i, j];
is great syntax and cross platform! When in reality it involves (in user space code) 3 complex classes (at a minimum!), overloading the comma operator(!), implicitly casting from builtin types, and probably hundreds of lines of template code (if you want any sort of extensibility). True it is cross platform and great syntax. But it obfuscates the amount of code and understanding required to do anything but what the most basic syntax allows, for example extending the system in any way.
The author I was replying points out how simple the syntax is. But that's missing the point. I provided a direct counter example:
Adding a new compiler to bazel is very complicated, and by new compiler I include something as simple as asserting "all of my C++ code is c++17" at a project level is (when done the correct way, and not one of the many hacky prone to failure ways) a 100+ line toolchain definition (because C++17 should be treated as an entirely new compiler from the perspective of bazel; treating it as a command line argument gets you in a bad place where you hit weird errors).
To draw an analogy, it's like saying that C++ code like:
is great syntax and cross platform! When in reality it involves (in user space code) 3 complex classes (at a minimum!), overloading the comma operator(!), implicitly casting from builtin types, and probably hundreds of lines of template code (if you want any sort of extensibility). True it is cross platform and great syntax. But it obfuscates the amount of code and understanding required to do anything but what the most basic syntax allows, for example extending the system in any way.