From: John Bokma on 22 Dec 2009 22:21 Ben Morrow <ben(a)morrow.me.uk> writes: > There are several newish dialects of Forth. OpenFirmware (as used in > some Apple and Sun machines) is Forth-based, as is FreeBSD's BTX > bootloader. colorForth by the father of Forth. -- John Bokma Read my blog: http://johnbokma.com/ Hire me (Perl/Python): http://castleamber.com/
From: ccc31807 on 22 Dec 2009 18:25 On Dec 22, 4:41 pm, Charlton Wilbur <cwil...(a)chromatico.net> wrote: > And I'm sure that someone in this newsgroup has a friend that is > convinced that the world will end in 2012. Many people belive many > idiotic things, and their belief is not sufficient to make things true. But how many of them can make a good, cogent, reasoned argument and cite actual evidence? There's a big difference between belief based on wishful thinking or superstition, and a believe based on facts and logic. > Except that there are lots of Big Companies, and the pool of programmers > is growing. In China and India? Still, big companies were once small companies. Speaking of which, I seem to recall that Yahoo about ten years ago migrated a large body of code from Perl to Java, and BlackBoard is now in the process of replacing a bunch of Perl code with Java. Is there some sort of law that says that small companies use stuff that gets things going quickly (e.g., Perl) and when they grow the migrate to stuff that everyone else uses (e.g., Java)? I'm sure that MS would like to monopolize programming technologies in the same way that it does productivity software or PC operating systems. CC
From: smallpond on 22 Dec 2009 18:41 On Dec 22, 2:39 pm, Martijn Lievaart <m...(a)rtij.nl.invlalid> wrote: > On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:32:56 -0800, smallpond wrote: > > On Dec 21, 7:25 pm, ccc31807 <carte...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> My take FWIW is that we are > >> experiencing a great explosion of languages and technologies: > > > Your premise is wrong. There has always been an explosion of languages. > > Compare APL, SAIL, Lisp, Smalltalk and BLISS for a range of old > > languages which are groundbreakingly different. By comparison, perl is > > indistinguishable from python. > > You forgot Prolog, Mouse and Forth. :-) > > M4 I never learned Forth (or Mouse), but I wrote some code in Postscript. There aren't many new stack-based languages, are there?
From: Sherm Pendley on 22 Dec 2009 18:48 ccc31807 <cartercc(a)gmail.com> writes: > On Dec 22, 4:41�pm, Charlton Wilbur <cwil...(a)chromatico.net> wrote: >> And I'm sure that someone in this newsgroup has a friend that is >> convinced that the world will end in 2012. �Many people belive many >> idiotic things, and their belief is not sufficient to make things true. > > But how many of them can make a good, cogent, reasoned argument and > cite actual evidence? About the same number that can make such an argument in support of their language evangelism. Each is based on about the same quality "evidence." Real programmers learn and use whatever tools best fit the task at hand. Wannabees try to force every task to fit their favorite language, and worry about its popularity, because they're incapable of learning more than one. Which kind are you? sherm--
From: Justin C on 22 Dec 2009 18:11
In article <cdaa3785-6610-4e8e-8ab0-81be30174916(a)b32g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, ccc31807 wrote: > On Dec 22, 9:32�am, smallpond <smallp...(a)juno.com> wrote: >> Your premise is wrong. There has always been an explosion of >> languages. �Compare APL, SAIL, Lisp, Smalltalk and BLISS for a >> range of old languages which are groundbreakingly different. >> By comparison, perl is indistinguishable from python. > > My personal experience does not go back but about ten years, so I > can't witness from personal experience, but ISTM that we are seeing a > great explosion in /scripting/ technologies (someone told me I omitted > JavaScript, Ajax, and ActionScript-Flex). I would agree that these has > always been a number of languages, but can you honestly say that that > there has ever been this number of /scripting/ languages that people > are using? I don't think that this is a revival of /scripting/ > languages so much as a new-vival. What about DOS (isn't a .bat just a script?), bash, ksh, ash, csh (and however many others) haven't these been around a long time? There must be other OSs of which I'm not familiar, Acorn, OS2, Next, haven't they scripting languages? Are there really that many *new* languages compared with how many there were? The "explosion" in scripting languages (if there is one) is a response to the web explosion. Fifteen years ago the web was breaking and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon, every TV program and it's dog stuck a URL in it's advertising. The scripting is used mostly to drive web 'applications', sites, databases, or web-whatever. Prior to the web the requirement for scripting was much, *much* less, it was personal or in-house, and, to a certain extent 'house' trusted staff to behave and not try to try to break software. Since the web explosion programmes/scripts have had to be more robust because they're used by the un-trusted. There is no explosion in scripting languages, the same languages that were being used are still being used more because every company, film, TV show, and geek has a web-site that requires scripting. The new languages you mentioned have come about as a response to the new demands of programming for the web. The other languages in your OP were written, not necessarily in the pre-web days, but without a full understanding of the possibilities of the web in mind (hence perl modules) - hands up who thinks we've explored all possibilities the web has to offer. Who knew where the web would go? The phenomenal increase in bandwidth has opened up the web as a platform for which it is practical to develop applications, and not just serve static web-pages. The bottom line is your Java/C# 'debate' is a non-debate. *All* scripting languages are "exploding", those two more so because they're *designed* for the purpose, designed for the field in which they're exploding. Everything else is adapting to it, they're not being left behind, the new arena is just not their primary domain (I'm ignoring PHP here[1]). For languages that are not embracing the web, well, maybe the developers believe there are better tools out there than trying to bend their tool to fit. There is no point in making a DOS .bat file a CGI script, it's really not up to the task, there are other languages much better suited. Justin. 1. For reasons covered elsewhere in this thread. -- Justin C, by the sea. |