Java vs. C#
in [Perl]
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From: Ben Morrow on 22 Dec 2009 19:12 Quoth smallpond <smallpond(a)juno.com>: > 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. :-) > > I never learned Forth (or Mouse), but I wrote some code in Postscript. > There aren't many new stack-based languages, are there? PostScript is just Forth with graphics primitives. I don't know about 'new', but dc(1) is stack-based. (It may be a subset of Forth: I don't know either language well enough to tell.) 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. Ben
From: Ben Morrow on 22 Dec 2009 19:18 Quoth Sherm Pendley <spamtrap(a)shermpendley.com>: > 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. s/best (.*hand)/$1 least badly, given the political and other constraints they are obliged to work with/ It's possible to write useful programs in languages as unpleasant as VBA or TeX, and a decent programmer should find having to do so 'annoying' rather than 'crippling'. Ben
From: sreservoir on 22 Dec 2009 19:38 On 12/22/2009 7:18 PM, Ben Morrow wrote: > Quoth Sherm Pendley<spamtrap(a)shermpendley.com>: >> 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. > > s/best (.*hand)/$1 least badly, given the political and other constraints > they are obliged to work with/ > > It's possible to write useful programs in languages as unpleasant as VBA > or TeX, and a decent programmer should find having to do so 'annoying' > rather than 'crippling'. It's a sad day when TeX is used to program. -- "Six by nine. Forty two." "That's it. That's all there is." "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"
From: Ben Morrow on 22 Dec 2009 19:41 Quoth Justin C <justin.0912(a)purestblue.com>: > 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? Have you ever *tried* writing a serious program in DOS batch :)? These languages are usually called 'shells', since that was their primary purpose (RISC OS's is called 'Obey' and OS/2 has 'REXX', which I believe is a half-decent language; NeXT is BSD-based, so it has sh). They are somewhat different from the languages normally called 'scripting' languages (the term 'dynamic languages' seems to be preferred nowadays). In particular, shells tend to have no data type except for 'string', no compile phase, no direct access to syscalls, and expect that most primitives will be external commands. > 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. Mwahahahaha. Remind me never to employ you as a sysadmin :). I really think the web is irrelevant here. Perl was hugely popular before the web, because it was about the first (Tcl was earlier, IIRC) language with both enough power to write real programs and enough flexibility to do so quickly. > 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. Which ones? JavaScript and PHP are about the only two scripting languages designed for the web. Python and Ruby were both designed to be general-purpose languages first, and Ruby at least has been very successful in taking Perl's place as the Right Thing to use for web systems (largely by chance, it has to be said). > 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. Neither Java nor C# are 'scripting languages'. They are both statically-typed, compile-in-advance languages just like C; the fact they compile for a VM rather than a real machine is unimportant. (Java at least can be compiled right down to machine code.) > 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. PHP is a sterling example of what happens when you build a language for a specific problem and fail to take more general design issues into account. The result may be easy to get started with (hence its popularity) but once you get beyond that you realise it's pretty much junk. Ben
From: ccc31807 on 22 Dec 2009 20:24
On Dec 22, 6:48 pm, Sherm Pendley <spamt...(a)shermpendley.com> wrote: > > 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." True, but there's a world of difference between an argument based on logic and some sort of evidence that can at least pass for empirical, and an argument based on illogic and made up 'facts'. > 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. I haven't personally had this experience, but I've known developers who were shoehorned into language X simply because the business manager could read X and nothing else, and I've known business managers who migrated to a particular framework because they wanted everything written using the same thing. One was a personal friend who implemented VB department wide. I interview for jobs occasionally, and it's typical to be told, "If you work here, you will use X." Would I not be a 'real programmer' if I accepted a position under these conditions and wrote only in X? CC. |