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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."
The author obviously is not in the right industry if he thinks developers only will program in VB.NET, C# or Java. I suppose I shouldn't show up to work on monday for the job I got programming C, because once the word gets out I'm *sure* that C will only be found in a museum.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Hmm... I'm no expert, but neither, apparently, is this guy.
A) All languages share a common runtime: Assembly. Just because I can run LISP and C on the same computer/runtime doesn't mean that they're similar. CS is all about abstraction. Of course you can have the same underlying structure, you can have different underlying structures too. That's the beauty of abstraction!
B) Java and C# are not the logical successors to C/C++. They're more like a smalltalk with a C-syntax and some trade-offs for efficiency. In terms of providing system calls and API's that are cross-platform... Well, even more like smalltalk!!
C) Remember, C++ started out as a preprocessor for C. Any "C++" code just became C code that was uglier to look at. The difference between procedural and object-oriented isn't that big a deal, other than it's often easier to think in OO and easier to implement a language that's procedural.
For a more interesting observation about the same problem that comes from Rob Pike (big UNIX guy at Bell Labs, co-wrote the UNIX Programming Environment) go here: Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant. It makes many good points about how cs is more the same than different now as compare to 10, 15 even 20 years ago!
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