The Problem Of Developing

A reader writes "ZDNet News is running an editorial about the choice of programming languages for developers today. The author suggests that developers have been left with little choice because all of the current programming languages are essentially the same."

Comments

Re:C#

[mozkill]

im not sure that something as "plagiaristic" as C# can be considered "different".

hmm... as a matter of fact, pluggable ideas for .NET may have originated from early Object Oriented Software, such as Logic Audio... so i wouldn't consider .NET innovative.

i use .NET Enterprise 2002 every day right now, so i think i can say these things.

the only conclusion that i have come to (on the subject of the article referenced here) is that .NET basically is so WELL DONE that it is the first time that all the languages are unified to such an extent, that they all seem the same.

its true... they werent the same to begin with, but one super large company seems to think that merging them all together is a good idea.

hmmmm....

bunch of crap

[mrpotato]

The article doesn't say anything, and is really aimed at manager-type people.

Example:
Look at some of the other languages that have been ported to the CLR. In every case, those languages have had to lose something important that made them different to fit the common dominator offered by the CLR. Microsoft has brought the notion of skins to programming indeed.
(emphasis mine)

What a gratuitous (and feeble) claim. The author obviously think that about 3 languages exists: C(and friends), Java and VB.

Some functionnal languages have been successfully ported to the CLR, and they didn't need to be amputated for that.

For example, Standard ML and Mercury. Both have been succesfully ported to the CLR without violence to those languages.

So, in conclusion, I agree that when you know only 3 procedural/OO languages you might be under the impression that all languages look alike.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:bunch of crap

[mrpotato]

Perl has always used typed variable, but those are "dynamically typed" instead of "statically typed" like the .NET architecture is.

Also, PerlNET is no blasphemy: you can still write Perl code as you've always had. It will work, you only need a `[interface: pure]' pseudo custom attribute in the interface specification.

Still, PerlNET also supports statically typed variables: they are there as an extension. So of course, the language was not amputated, it was extended to make better use of the CLR architecture.

An interesting thing is that you still can use CPAN modules with PerlNET and they will work.

Shucks

[medcalf]

I guess I'll have to tell my boss I can no longer do Perl scripting for him. And I suppose I'll have to stop writing the shareware game I'm working on until I have time to convert the existing Objective-C to C# - assuming that there will be a MacOS X C# runtime and IDE that I can use. And I suppose all of that C code I've written in the past will have to be junked by the people using it.

Oh, well. Another day, another stupid analyst.

Re:What is he smoking

[dildofire]

large software companies want everyone to believe that C/C++ are completely obselete, to push new users towards their newer technologies. and once you've committed to using those technologies, you'll of course need to buy a copy of ms visual studio or something similar to take full advantage of it. no one makes money if developers use C/C++, vi, gcc, and gdb.

that being said, i don't think C/C++ is always the right way to go. it all comes down to picking the right tool for the job.

Re:Truth of article depends on who you know

[syzxys]

Sorry guys, Perl is not where the money is at.

Strange, my wallet disagrees with you.

It's true a lot of in-house corporate software uses VB, etc., but a lot of other software (including software produced by major corporations and sold for a LOT of money, e.g. engineering software) doesn't. Like I said originally, it depends on what part of the software development world you look at.

---
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!

methinks you misread that

[Preposterous Coward]

probably because it was shabbily written and edited... but what he's trying to say is that intrepreted languages had proven their advantage in most (ie, non-high-performance) apps, leaving just one niche (high-performance apps) for compiled languages.

Whether this claim has any merit or not is left as an exercise to the reader.