How Heraclitus would Design a Programming Language

Which fanboy are you? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 00:46 · Score: 5, Funny

Which fanboy are you?

Windows

You wear wraparound sunglasses, even indoors. You wish your mother would let you ride a motorbike. You tell your friends you're pulling in $50,000 a year and $2,000 a month "playing the stock market" but in reality you're only bringing in half that and your dividends from MSFT havn't been good in years. Your non computing friends all turn to you for help; you only charge $30 an hour. Your collegues talk about you behind your back. Your workplace nickname is likely to be "The Asshole". Unlike the Linux fanboys, you actually try to pick up dates in bars but women laugh at you.
Apple

ou think you're so cool you hurt. You have mirrors on every wall in your "loft apartment", which is really a grimy little apartment next to a guy who plays Guns 'n Roses at 3am. All of your furniture is from Ikea. You sometimes think that changing your name to "Steve" would be "pretty cool". When you go to bars you only drink Miller Lite. No body ever asks you for help with their computers because they know you don't know anything but OS X, even if you do tell them you "run Unix" now. Your friends openly laugh at you.
Linspire

You regularly give $10 bills to homeless guys because you have too much money. Computers baffle you, but you enjoy looking at pictures of naked women. You don't know what Linux is, but you continually bugged the IT guy at work about your computer he installed Linspire on your machine.
Umbongo

You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac. When you saw the multiracial image used as a desktop picture and heard that this operating system came from the same country as Nelson Mandella, you knew it was for you. You meet with your friends in fair-trade coffee houses and talk about the eventual overthrow of evil corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks. Like the Linspire user, you have very little real knowlege when it comes to computers but you would never use your computer to look at pictures of women degrading themselves.
Gentoy

You've been "into computers" for ohh, one or two years now and fancy yourself as "a bit of a hacker". Wouldn't know C from C++, or even Perl for that matter. Older Gentoy users may be building their homes from matchsticks. You've explained to all your friends that your matchstick house will have an "optimised floorplan". They've tried to tell you that your house violates every known building code and law in your area, but you've ignored them so far because you can't read those complicated regulatory documents.
Linux From Scratch

Much like the Gentoy user but you'd also be into sadomasochistic sex if you could get it. You're not just building a house from matchsticks, you're planing to grow the trees to make the matchsticks. You've cleared some land but don't know what to do next because you havn't read the books you've got, so you've posted to alt.arborists.newbie asking for help. It's been three days so far and no one has replied. You remain hopeful.

Re:Which fanboy are you? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 01:44 · Score: 2, Funny

7. Amiga

You are a bitter person, twisted by how unfair the world is to have ignored your choice of system and operating system. You still think it is the late 80s, and don't realise that everybody else has caught up, gone past and then lapped you. Oddly enough you hate your neighbour, also an Amiga fanboy, because they have a blue front door. You have a collection of Amiga t-shirts, including a XXXL Amiga Inc t-shirt sent out 3 years after you paid $50 to try and keep your platform alive. You current hardware uses a 5 year old VIA southbridge, and you need to use a PCI card IDE controller because of it. You don't really know how computers work despite having used one for nearly 20 years. You still think that PCs have no custom chips and use the original x86 instruction set.
Re:Which fanboy are you? by essreenim · 2005-02-09 02:13 · Score: 4, Funny

8. GNU HERD
You don't really exist in the conventional sense. You are more an abstraction. So too is your operating system. Your imaginery friends call you all the time to arrange getting together to add on more features to your imaginery OS. You will always buy the fair trade bar of chocolate for $5 before the bag of smarties @ $0.50 but thats ok, because although the cost to your productivity by using HERD now runs into the tens of thousands, that is more than made up for by the imaginery dent you are doing to the Microsoft corrporation. You could be from anywhere but you might well be German and as you know very well, its dangerous to purchase proprietary software but it's ok to stone someone else to death for using it!
: )

Not C++ I hope by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 00:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Hello Gentlemen,

I'm a first year programming student at an Ivy League school and I've
just finished my Visual Basic classes. This term I'll be moving onto
C++. However I've noticed some issues with C++ that I'd like to
discuss with the rest of the programming community. Please do not
think of me as being technically ignorant. In addition to VB, I am
very skilled at HTML programming, one of the most challenging
languages out there!

C++ is based on a concept known as Object Oriented Programming. In
this style of programming (also known as OOPS in the coding community)
a programmer builds "objects" or "glasses" out of his code, and then
manipulates these "glasses". Since I'm assuming that you, dear reader,
are as skilled at programming as I am, I'll skip further explanation
of these "glasses".

Please allow me to make a brief aside here and discuss the origins C++
for a moment. My research shows that this language is one of the
oldest languages in existence, pre-dating even assembly! It was
created in the early 70s when AT&T began looking for a new language to
write BSD, its Unix Operation System (later on, other companies would
"borrow" the BSD source code to build both Solaris and Linux!)
Interestingly, the name C++ is a pun by the creator of the language.
When the first beta was released, it was remarked that the language
would be graded as a C+, because of how hideously complex and unwieldy
it was. The extra plus was tacked on during a later release when some
of these issues were fixed. The language would still be graded a C,
but it was the highest C possible! Truly a clever name for this
language.

Back to the topic on hand, I feel that C++ - despite its flaws - has
been a very valuable tool to the world of computers. Unfortunately
its starting to show its age, and I feel that it should be
retired, as COBOL, ADA and Smalltalk seem to have been. Recently I've
become acquainted with another language that's quite recently been
developed. Its one that promises to greatly simplify programming. This
new language is called C.

Although syntactically borrowing a great deal from its predecessor
C++, C greatly simplifies things (thus its name, which hints at its
simpler nature by striping off the clunky double-pluses.) Its biggest
strength is that it abandons an OOPS-style of programming. No more
awkward "objects" or "glasses". Instead C uses what are called
structs. Vaguely similar to a C++ "glass", a struct does away with
anachronisms like inheritance, namespaces and the whole
private/public/protected/friend access issues of its variables and
routines. By freeing the programmer from the requirement to juggle all
these issues, the coder can focus on implementing his algorithm and
rapidly developing his application.

While C lacks the speed and robustness of C++, I think these are petty
issues. Given the speed of modern computers, the relative sluggishness
of C shouldn't be an issue. Robustness and stability will occur as C
becomes more pervasive amongst the programming community and it
becomes more fine-tuned. Eventually C should have stability rivaling
that of C++.

I'm hoping to see C adopted as the de facto standard of programming.
Based on what I've learned of this language, the future seems very
bright indeed for C! Eventually, many years from now, perhaps we'll
even see an operating system coded in this language.

Thank you for your time. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Re: I had Heraclitus once by Black+Parrot · 2005-02-09 00:55 · Score: 3, Funny

> The itching wasn't so bad, but the burning drove me nuts.

Sounds like Hera shared more than her clitus.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Misleading headline by Pan+T.+Hose · 2005-02-09 00:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

Notwithstanding the grammar mistake--I hope editors will have corrected it before I finish writing this comment--it is not "How [Would] Heraclitus ... Design a Programming Language" but rather "What Programming Language Would Heraclitus Design." On the other hand if you are wondering how should you desing and implement a programming language, I would suggest targetting Parrot which makes implementing compilers 1000 times easier than ever before, not to even mention future interoperability and e.g. access to the entire CPAN from the level of your own brand new language, effectively solving the most important problem of new languages: there are no libraries so people don't write anything, and people don't write anything so there are no libraries. Good luck.

--
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."

Re:Misleading headline by geoffspear · 2005-02-09 02:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Actually, I'm fairly certain that Mr. Kay is more concerned with how we should design programming languages. If you ask him which language [idealized figure] would design, he'll almost certainly tell you that it's not one that's been designed yet, and he'd probably be willing to accept that he's probably not going to be the one to design it.
I'm pretty sure that if you suggested to him that designing a language by following Perl's example was a good idea, he'd laugh at you, though.

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.

No decent langauges... by MosesJones · 2005-02-09 01:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'd disagree that there aren't people who can design decent languages. The problem is that they can't market them, and that developers continue to go back to the brain-dead syntax of C as if looking like C was an aspiration for a language.

Languages like Ada, Eiffel etc (which yes I have used commercially) are brilliant from a language perspective, especially for large projects. The trouble is developers would prefer to write something in 5 characters than 30 characters in a mistaken belief that they are being more productive and that typing is the longest task they undertake.

When you get into more "esoteric" areas like goal driven programming or agents then the languages become better, because the people using them are more aware of the purpose of the language and aren't constrained by a belief that it has to look like C.

C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.

The problem isn't language designers its us developers, we don't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop, we want to use what we used before. In other words we are luddites.

Smalltalk was okay, but I prefered Eiffel, Java and C# are both by comparison rubbish, but they have better GUI libraries and marketing departments.

--
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi

Re:No decent langauges... by zerocool^ · 2005-02-09 01:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.

I've always felt that learning new syntax is relatively easy. By that, I mean, once you "learn how to program", as in figure out how to be in that zen position where you understand the flow of information and lines of code start leaking out of your fingers, applying a new syntax isn't too hard. It may take you a few days or weeks, and you may need to keep google / quick reference guide handy, but mostly, learning the first one correctly propels you into a scenario where you can learn other languages quickly.

~Wx

--
sig?
Re:No decent langauges... by plague3106 · 2005-02-09 01:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm not a luddite, I just don't feel like typing an essay to make the computer do something simple.

I used Eiffel in college, and didn't it find it to be all that great. To make your compiled program run at a decent speed, you had to 'freeze' it (melting IIRC was the quick & dirty no opimization compile) which would take hours. Hours if find if you are compling a huge project (say a kernel) but for a simple graphical poker game..ugh.

I know terminology is probably something that held it back...freeze, pebbles, etc.

It was wordy and too strict style-wise. Why the hell should i have to type a : when doing an assignment? From ... until ... loop ... end? Why do I need all that just to specify a loop? Why is for( init ; condition ; increment ){ } harder?

Having to type all that extra stuff does add up, and while typing isn't the largest task, when it does finally come time to code, I don't wnat to spend my day writing extra, unnessary crap to make the program work.

Please explain why C# or Java is rubbish compared to Eiffel? I'm all for learning a new syntax if it buys you something new...but Eiffel's syntax doesn't, I just takes more typing and requires you to remember even more keywords.
Re:No decent langauges... by Cthefuture · 2005-02-09 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

The C language itself my not be perfect but the syntax really is one of the best. That's why it's used so often and it has nothing to do with the language itself.

Your examples don't make any sense because Ada and Eiffel have a very C-like syntax. As does Pascal, Visual Basic, and a ton of other languages.

C is just a very concise version of the same syntax. This is why it's better than the others. It has power without extra fluff. It's a perfect starting point for making a more powerful language.

Smalltalk does not use a C-like syntax though and that is one reason why no one uses Smalltalk. Its syntax sucks.

The perfect language would have an extended C-like (or C++-like) syntax. The extensions to the syntax would make functional programming easier. They would allow things like heavy use of recursion without performance loss. Being able to choose between mutable and nonmutable variables would be good too (especially if the language made this very efficient).

--
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Re:No decent langauges... by |<amikaze · 2005-02-09 03:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

I used a fair bit of Eiffel last semester, and love the language. I do have a theory as to why it hasn't gotten a more mainstream acceptance than a lot of other languages though: ESTUDIO. That is one of the most painful IDEs I have ever used. I can't even think of what else to say... EStudio was one of the largest barriers for me doing my assignments, because there was numerous times I felt it was actually working against me.
Re:No decent langauges... by bluGill · 2005-02-09 04:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Saving lines is useful because you can fit only so many lines on screen at once, and the eye can only scan so many at a time.
The more code I can understand at a time, the easier it is for me to understand the program and fix the bugs. If you know the language well, and the style is good, you don't need real words (which are just representations of something anyway) where a symbol will do.
Note that I said understand. Sometimes adding lines makes code easier to understand, othertimes subtracting lines makes the code more readable. Sometimes that means a if/else sequence using at least 4 lines, othertime the ?: on one line. Depends on what you want to do, and what needs to be understood.
I care that the code is understandable in most cases. In a few rare cases you must sacrifice understandability for performance, but that should be well documented, and very rare.

Hey, I like Perl! by gweihir · 2005-02-09 01:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

Perl is a very powerful language to write small tools in the UNIX philosophy. It works very well. It requires some level of competence in the user, but so does every advanced tool. And it is not a general-purpose language.

Frankly, without Perl my work would be far harder.

I also like Eiffel. Guess I am one of those scary people that actually use different tools for different tasks and do not spam the world with simplistic, general and irrelevant statements. about

--
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.

Re:Hey, I like Perl! by hattig · 2005-02-09 01:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wouldn't want to write Office in Perl, but yes, Perl is an excellent scripting language made extrememly useful by all the modules available for it.

Would you spend ages writing a text parser in Java to get some text formatted data into a database, or would you do it in an hour in Perl? Especially if you are working on a remote system, any unix system is pretty much guaranteed to have Perl installed.

It is all about choosing the best language for the task. If I was writing mobile phone games, I'd use Java because most modern phones have Java. If I was writing a Windows application for general release, I'd use C/C++/C#. In-house GUI application - Java because it is quick, easy and maintainable, and hopefully would run on any Unix systems too.

There is an advantage to using a popular language - if you have a problem, it is far more likely you'll find a solution online.

Also, you are restricted by the languages you know and project timescales. Java might not be ideal, but lots of people know it and it may not be perfect, but it works for lots of tasks. Likewise I know Perl, but maybe you know Ruby or Python and can do stuff in those instead. Oh, and knowing a language isn't about knowing the language structure, it is about knowing the APIs with it, which is the time consuming task.

Oh, and maybe American universities might be churning out Java programmers from their Computer Science courses, but that wasn't what I experienced in the UK. Okay, it was Cambridge, but Java was 1 course out of dozens, and we also did ML and Modula3 (although that has now been dropped and replaced by another Java course, I was on the crossover year I think). The C course was a 6 lecture course of where you could fuck up with C, they assumed you would learn C yourself.
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by geoffspear · 2005-02-09 01:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

Umm, that's his point. People use it as a general purpose language because they can. It started off as something useful for writing small tools, then got extended so you can do just about anything with it, without really being designed from the outset to be like that.
If you're using it as a much more powerful replacement to sed, it's a great tool. If you're using it to replace C to develop complex application, you're proving Mr. Kay's point.

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by otis+wildflower · 2005-02-09 02:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

And off all the games I've seen on the cell phone, the ones i actually enjoyed playing were very simplistic, and probably were better off programmed in C.

Which API?

J2ME is constant across all mobile envs (symbian UIQ/Nokia, M$, Linux). What C-based phone multimedia API is?
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by Cmdr+TECO · 2005-02-09 02:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Perl is a very powerful language to write small tools in the UNIX philosophy.

IHBT, right?

It was intended to subvert the Unix philosophy. More specifically, it was intended to subvert that part of Unix philosophy that said that every tool should do only one thing and do that one thing well. -- Larry Wall

--
echo 33676832766569823265328479713269.8639857989Pq | dc
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by CableModemSniper · 2005-02-09 03:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

There's nothing you can do with sed and awk that you can't do in just plain sh. Having 656K for the shell and 311Kb for awk and 41Kb for sed when writing a small tool is ridiculous.

--
Why not fork?
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by Black+Perl · 2005-02-09 03:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'd dislike perl less if it were not the programming language of choice of the computer-illiterate.

Good news. The vast majority of them have moved on to PHP :), leaving some very high-quality programmers. Many recent CPAN modules are case in point. There's Bryar and Catalyst, excellent Ruby-on-rails style MVC application platforms, just as one example. Template Toolkit, SOAP::Lite, Class::DBI (object/relational mapping) etc. are excellent tools to build upon.

The advantage of Perl is not the Syntax. Hell, if it was, everyone would have moved on to Python by now :). The advantage is CPAN. Any application you want to write is 80% done already.

--
bp
Re:Hey, I like Perl! by AnxiousMoFo · 2005-02-09 13:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

I've had to fix bugs in shell scripts written using awk and sed - you know, shell scripts that consist of a long chain of pipes from one awk script to the next? Man, anyone who bitches about how perl is write-only should try fixing awk pipe chains. Or shell scripts in general, really. There's a reason that there's a whole section in Unix Power Tools about nothing but the quoting rules in bash.

There's a lot that I can do with perl that I can't do with awk and sed: uncompressing flate-encoded streams in PDFs (using Compress::Zlib), parsing XML, controlling desktop apps using Win32::OLE, etc.

I have been on the receiving end of a big pile of spaghetti code written in Perl, chock full of bad things like subroutines that modify global variables and file manipulations that depend on chdir() calls 200 lines back. It's extremely easy to write incredibly crappy code in Perl, but as you mention yourself, it is possible to write clean, structured code in Perl.

I've found Perl to be a good solution to problems too complex to be resolved by a 10 line shell script, but simple enough not to require a C or C++ project. That includes the UI for an internal web application, the photo album CGI for my personal web site, and tons of relatively small tools that I use every day. I wouldn't call the language perfect, but it (and CPAN) gets the job done.

I got your perl right here. by zerocool^ · 2005-02-09 01:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Ah, perl poetry.

< >!*''# ^"`$$- !*=@$_ %*<> ~#4 &[]../ |{!,,SYSTEM HALTED

or,

Waka waka bang star tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang star equal at dollar under-score,
Percent star waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Pipes curly-bracket bang comma comma CRASH.

Also: Isn't it odd that perl is the one language that hardly ever makes it past the slashdot lameness filter?

~Wx

--
sig?

Re:I got your perl right here. by fanatic · 2005-02-09 01:36 · Score: 3, Funny

Isn't the idea of perl poetry that it is supposed to complile in perl? Your example fails that test. Of course, it fails most other tests, too.

--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Re:I got your perl right here. by bitswapper · 2005-02-09 01:45 · Score: 2, Funny

String found where operator expected at ./poetry.pl line 2, at end of line
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
syntax error at ./poetry.pl line 2, near "!"
Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at ./poetry.pl line 2.
Re:I got your perl right here. by Sentry21 · 2005-02-09 04:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

I decided long ago that any language where '$|++;' is a complete line of code is not worth my time.

For reference, that's a pipe, not an 'L' or a '1', and that line turns off output buffering. OBVIOUSLY.

Perl is useful for a lot of different things, but so are a lot of other languages, and they aren't nearly so obtuse.
Re:I got your perl right here. by The+Unabageler · 2005-02-09 04:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

some real perl poetry:
# If you awake and see the sunrise # bathing earth in red and gold, # As you gaze you'll somehow find # it brings a washing of the soul. #!/usr/bin/perl if (sleep(1) and @earth =($sunrise{red},$sunrise{gold})) { @soul = map {&wash(\@soul,$_)} (keys %sunrise,@earth); }
and while not a poem in the strict sense, you do get a good rythm going when reading this next one. It's inspired by watching someone fail miserably at parallel parking.
#!/usr/bin/perl sub out(@){join"",@_}sub in($;){pop}$/=in out *,="Just another Perl hacker";open IN,$0;$OUT =in <IN>;$|=1&& $OUT=~/((OUT)?.(.). IN.+)/is; @_=out qw|R 5 V : C % & : @ P F < E ! % ( R 5 & : T ] F ; A ! " = S 5 G 2 8|; for $ward( in reverse@_){push@for,$ward,in reverse}print in unpack out($3), in out reverse in out reverse in out reverse out @for,$ward, reverse; close IN and kill 9,in $$ or eval in out in out $1;

--
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees; print'

Illuminatus! by Tackhead · 2005-02-09 01:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

...it develops that Alan Kay is an agent of the Underground, which is called Dobbs' Lightning because of Heraclitus' idea that Dobbs first manifested Himself as a lightning bolt which created the world.

It was in Dobbs' Lightning that I first read Tux Sneezed, which I still think is a rip-roaring good yarn. The scene where Atlanta Hope sees Niklaus Wirth and it's her old *ahem* "boyfriend" with the gaunt cheeks, and he said "I am Bob Dobbs", man, that's writing. The 103-page long speech afterwards, explaining the importance of strong typing and showing why all the anti-Heracletians are destroying civilization by destroying strong typing, certainly is persuasive, especially to me who's got three (going on four) contracts, each of which share the same include files. "Without strong typing there can be no civilization."

Her nonfiction book, "Antitrust: The Unknown Ideal for the New Heracletian" is, I think, a distinct letdown, but the Dobbs' Lightning bumper stickers sure give people the creeps.

I met Atlanta Hope at the time of the IEEE Committee Riots. I was in the thick of it (you have no idea how bizarre civil war gets when one side uses nerf weapons as a large part of its arsenal), and met Atlanta herself where the last stand was being made. She grabbed my right arm and howled something like "War is the Health of the State! Conflict is the creator of all things!"

Seeing as how she was on a heavy Heraclitus wavelength, I quoted with great passion, "Men should fight for the Laws as they would for the walls of the city!" That won her, and I was Atlanta's personal lieutenant for the rest of the battle.

(Epilogue: Heraclitus -- He was apt to say odd things. Once he even wrote that "Religious ceremonies are unholy." A strange duck.)

astounding hubris by jeif1k · 2005-02-09 01:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

I would suggest targetting Parrot [slashdot.org] which makes implementing compilers 1000 times easier than ever before,

In light of more than half a century of dynamic language history, that's just astounding hubris. By comparison with systems like Lisp and Dylan, for example, the Parrot system is still enormously complex, limited, and cumbersome from the programmer's point of view. And compared to Smalltalk, Perl/Parrot isn't even in the same league when it comes to programming environments, browsers, and other tools (in fact, very little really is).

Kay's example of Perl as a language that reinvents the wheel poorly is as appropriate today with Parrot as it was for earlier versions of Perl. The fact that Perl is useful in practice (I use it all the time) because it has lots of libraries and ports doesn't change the fact that its foundations are poorly thought out.

Perl by The+Famous+Brett+Wat · 2005-02-09 01:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

I like languages mostly for the way they challenge my established thinking on programming. Smalltalk wasn't that much of a challenge to me, because I learned it fairly late in the overall scheme of things, and had already learned some of its concepts from other, more recent languages. Eiffel taught me the joys of assertions and programming by contract, as well as the joys and limitations of the OO inheritance model. Haskell was fascinating for its lazy evaluation, and the possibility of infinite lists.

But Perl! Ah, Perl! Such a bundle of contradictions! It violated every rule I held dear about language theory, and was a better language for it. Perl doesn't try to be a theoretically perfect language for any particular theory of linguistic perfection. It has principles, but it is not a slave to those principles. It has a degree of consistency, but never a foolish consistency.

No language on Earth has made me rethink my concepts of "what makes a good language" more than Perl.

--
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.

Re:Perl by Viol8 · 2005-02-09 01:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

"I'm so sick of all this anti-Perl talk. I write powerful applications in Perl and they are definetly not 'write only'."

Your perl apps may be amazingly legible and easy to understand , but most I've seen are written by paid up members of the The Shorter The Better club. Usually resulting in a rats nest of complex regular expressions and obscure syntax making it impossible to get a clear understanding of whats going on without intensive study of the code. Other languages can allow obtuse code but only Perl makes it so easy it becomes 2nd nature.
Re:Perl by Eravnrekaree · 2005-02-09 03:28 · Score: 2, Informative

I agree completely. I have used Perl and it is one of the eisiest to use languages I have found, and it does not encourage one to write bad code. If someone is going to write bad code, they will write bad code in any language they use, they will find a way. Creating a restrictive language actually I believe can make the language worse, by placing a lot of arbitrary limitations on what can be done, the language can be made much more difficult for the programmer to use when they really do need to do something unusual, probably increasing the chances of an ugly hack. Perl makes simple things simple but if you need to do something more complex and demanding it doesnt make those things more complex than they need to be by saying, to borrow a phrase from 2001, "Sorry, I can't let you do that, Dave", placing a bunch of limitations on you.

I have written very readable Perl applications and I have found that when I show and teach other people Perl they too also write well written and readable applications, its quite natural, Perl makes writing well written applications that are clear quite easy, in fact, to me, it is eiser to read and understand a Perl program than it is a C or C++, far eisier in fact.

Perl also gives me a powerful environment that allows me to easily write powerful and large applications which are yet still maintainable, easily and quickly with minimal fuss.

Perl does things a bit differently than some other languages, especially in regards to its OO usage. But just because something is different doesnt mean it is bad. Some people it seems automatically if something is different they automatically think it is bad. However, i think perls OO system is actually very elegant and useable, at least as much so as the OO systems in Ruby, Python etc.

Perl, to me anyway, is powerful, rich, easy to use, and in which it is quite natural to write readable code, and has allowed me to write better code faster.
Re:Perl by geoffspear · 2005-02-09 03:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

Umm, I think the article went WAY over your head.
Yes, businesses use perl for business-critical applications. Why do you think that proves anything about the theory of designing languages? Businesses used Windows 3.1, too. Does that prove that it's the perfect operating system, so no one should have bothered to develop any new ones?
Businesses need to use some tool that exists now. Alan Kay, who is hardly ignorant about the subject, doesn't think there isany existing language that doesn't have some sort of problems, so saying that perl has problems isn't "anti-Perl" talk. He has the same sort of concerns about Smalltalk, which he invented himself. Getting upset about some quote about where your favorite language went wrong is just moronic. All languages have gone wrong, and that's the problem he's talking about.

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.

Lisp by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 01:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

I kindof get the impression Kay hasn't looked at modern lisp as much as historic lisp - for starters, lisp has had structured data for, well, decades (no, lisp doesn't just do symbols and lists, okay?), and while us lispers applying lessons from compsci type theory piecemeal to practical lisp drives the static-typing bigots/purists into insane flamewars, the existence-proof of the applicability of such lessons that availability of type-inferencing lisp compilers such as CMUCL and SBCL shows that Kay's comments about lisp and types are again, while not exactly wrong, are mostly applicable to the lisp of yore (and with, lisp, we're really talking _yore_, compared to almost any still-used language around today except FORTRAN), not ANSI Common Lisp.

So I don't particularly like his pigoenholing of lisp - he says there were three working extensible languages, and smalltalk was one of them, kindof not mentioning however, that lisp _wrote the book_ on extensible languages. Every good lisp program extends the vocabulary of the lisp language into the problem domain (a characteristic shared with good Forth).

I confidently predict something vaguely recognisable as "Lisp" will outlast pretty much every other computer language on the planet. You see, new dynamic languages have a choice when they get to a certain point (a choice e.g. python is now facing) - do they add the remaining features of lisp and thereby "risk" being classed as a reinvented dialect of lisp, or refuse those features, maintain their independent identity, but forever cripple their language compared to lisp?

Re:Lisp by Stu+Charlton · 2005-02-09 04:09 · Score: 4, Informative

So I don't particularly like his pigoenholing of lisp - he says there were three working extensible languages, and smalltalk was one of them, kindof not mentioning however, that lisp _wrote the book_ on extensible languages.

I wouldn't be that hard on him.

If you search him further you'll see he has probably done more to promote Lisp than most others whose speciality isn't _already_ Lisp.

In his Turing award lecture this past October at OOSPLA 2004, he told the audience (paraphrased): "you owe it to yourself and your profession to seriously learn Lisp".

--
-Stu

language developers disconnected from reality by jeif1k · 2005-02-09 01:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'd disagree that there aren't people who can design decent languages. The problem is that they can't market them,

No, the problem is that the people who know a lot about languages know little about application domains, and the people who know a lot about application domains know little about how to design languages (or at least don't spend much time on it).

That's why languages like MATLAB dominate scientific computing and languages like Perl, PHP, and Java dominate web computing, and why languages like CAML, Haskell, Lisp, and Smalltalk have never ended up being good general purpose languages.

The problem isn't language designers its us developers, we don't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop, we want to use what we used before. In other words we are luddites.

Programmers contribute to the problem. But while many people have syntactic hangups, even more of them just "don't get" a different approach to programming at all.

Re:language developers disconnected from reality by MosesJones · 2005-02-09 01:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

No, the problem is that the people who know a lot about languages know little about application domains, and the people who know a lot about application domains know little about how to design languages (or at least don't spend much time on it).

I have to disagree here, the team that designed Ada for instance REALLY understood about application domains and the challenges of developing languages, and the people judging the competition to design Ada DEFINATELY understood the challenges of languages. The problem was that it wasn't "cool" like C, and they didn't focus on providing elements like DB connectivity or GUI frameworks as standard (understandable in the 1980s).

I've worked on projects with Ada, and as a language it was superb. Same with Eiffel. The biggest problem that I had managing those teams were the malcontents who complained that writing

"foreach n in X loop"

with an "end loop;" at the end. This was FAR too much work apparently and coding would be much quicker writing

"for(x = 0; x y; x++)"

In the end around 20% of the code was written in C, and 80% in Ada. 95% of our bugs were in the C code.

Keeps us in jobs though I guess, if we used better languages we wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing things.

--
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Re:language developers disconnected from reality by jejones · 2005-02-09 03:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm no fan of C, but...

1. I'm sure you meant to write "for (i = 10; i <= 100; i++)"

2. C's for loop construct is one of its good points, as it lets one put loop control in one place for a far broader range of loops than just iteration over an arithmetic sequence, e.g.

for (ptr = head; ptr != NULL; ptr = ptr->next)

becomes immediately recognizable as an idiom for iterating over a linked list.
Re:language developers disconnected from reality by jeif1k · 2005-02-09 06:28 · Score: 3, Informative

If you want a quick and simple answer, you can't go wrong learning Python and/or C#: they are good, useful compromises between language design and practicality and if you do anything with computers, you'll probably find a use for them at some point. And they support and teach what are generally considered good mainstream programming practices. (Python has excellent numerical support, by the way, and may be a reasonable alternative to MATLAB if you don't depend on toolboxes that aren't available for Python yet.)

It is perfectly fine, though, to stick with C and MATLAB as long as they work for you; programming languages are a means to an end, and everybody's needs are different. I was using MATLAB for many years even though I thought the language sucked, and I stopped using it only when the language actually started getting in the way too much.
Re:language developers disconnected from reality by Black+Parrot · 2005-02-10 01:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

> When Ada was released it's documentation was something like 10 times as much as C++ had. C++ is larger Ada's NOW, and Ada hasn't changed. (Partially this is because C++ originally had poor documentation, and partially it's because the C++ specs repeatedly needed to be expanded.

Ironically (in the popular sense of the word), one of the reasons often cited as a reason to use C++ over Ada now ("Ada doesn't have standard class libraries") is the same reason often cited for not using Ada when it first came out ("there's way too much stuff in this language").

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

The Java vocational training quote rings true by betelgeuse68 · 2005-02-09 01:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

But I think that's as much as a function of the fact that a developer today is standing on the shoulders of giants more than ever.

To quote Isaac Newton, "If I have been able to see farther, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

Frankly, we've hit a point where there's a lot less "science" in Computer Science, or rather, the need for such training in many programming jobs.

There's nothing wrong with a well rounded education but for some people they don't have the time or inclination to take on full engineering curriculums (as I did).

While I don't mind have gotten a rounded education in light of where tech careers have gone, it's too bad I didn't follow my father... construction. Given his real estate holdings, I doubt I will reach his station in life (economically) if I stay on a pure tech track... highly unlikely.

So if CS degrees are nowadays more about vocational training, so what. A tech degree of any kind, no matter how full of yourself you are, is not going to take you where it once might. That's reality. For all the noise we hear about a focus on math & science, it seems to me to be rendered somewhat moot since some Big Wig Biz guy is going to offshore such work anyway. So I ask, what's the point?

Don't get me wrong, a good foundation in math is good, we just don't all need to become math majors...

If you manage to learn and apply algebra, you can at least solve some practical math problems. But considering some of the stories of people who can't deal with fractions, well, obviously we're failing somewhere in the math department.

Anyway, just rambling now...

-M

Re:The Java vocational training quote rings true by The+Desert+Palooka · 2005-02-09 02:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

Guess who the real world needs more of?

People who know what their doing, and why, instead of, as I said in my post, shoving everything in their Java Box.

Java isn't always the best solution, or even possible, on every platform.

Actually you can say that about every language... But there is one thing that is always true, on every platform, and that's the theories of Computer Science.
Re:The Java vocational training quote rings true by otis+wildflower · 2005-02-09 02:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

But there is one thing that is always true, on every platform, and that's the theories of Computer Science.

However, to be quite honest, they relate very little to the needs of most mundane business IT requirements. Or, rather, the ones that do are pretty much handled by the first two years of a decent undergrad CS program. Everything beyond that is really only applied in software businesses (like Google, iD, MSFT, etc) rather than the majority of corps that are software consumers (Home Depot, DaimlerChrysler, etc..) Let's face it, a CS grad would come out of a good program looking to build stuff in all her favorite languages and paradigms, but lo and behold, there's legacy code, greybeards who swear by C, managers demanding that you code to standards so new hires can read your stuff.... All the things that didn't matter really back in the academy but are cruelly part of computing in private industry.

Most modern IT is building software that incorporates business practices and logic, or glues disparate systems together. In the real world you need a limited number of designers (who needn't be CS PhDs) to build a coherent design, and a bunch of codemonkeys to build, document, test, debug, wash, rinse, repeat.

The reality of corporate computing in most real-world applications (where IT and software development are a cost center not a revenue generator) is undoubtedly dull and boring to enthusiastic CS grads. As it is, the US really doesn't have much in the way of an analogue to German 'meister' vocational programs, excepting in guilded apprentice trades (like plumbing, carpentry, etc), that get much in the way of respect..
Re:The Java vocational training quote rings true by otis+wildflower · 2005-02-09 03:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Undergraduate courses are not the place for vocational training no matter how good the stats look for the government.

OK then, what is?

The US doesn't have a German-style 'meister' crafts system for coding or other IT functions. BA in CS is as close as it gets, or you could go for an EE degree to swap Sun FRUs and be completely stupid overkill.

You have a point in that undergrads are not the place for vocational training, but my response is that we really don't have any current workable alternative that has the interview-respect of a guild-style system or a meister system.

If your goal is to build CS into a taller ivory tower, fine, but not until there's a legitimate alternative that can give people, say, two years of all the theory that's going to be used in the real world today and a couple years of practicum (building infrastructure, doing documentation, coding, internship) that will garner some form of vocational accreditation that people will accept.

Frankly, for most of the work I do (sysadmin hardware/software, networks, etc) I would rather have someone who had 2 years in CS foundations and 2+ years doing labs with 'standard' stuff like Solaris, Linux, VxVM/VCS, EMC gear, etc. from a legit institution than a newly-minted BSCS or BSEE.
Re:The Java vocational training quote rings true by nagora · 2005-02-09 03:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

Let's face it, a CS grad would come out of a good program looking to build stuff in all her favorite languages and paradigms, but lo and behold, there's legacy code, greybeards who swear by C, managers demanding that you code to standards so new hires can read your stuff.... All the things that didn't matter really back in the academy but are cruelly part of computing in private industry.
But that's not a "good" program, that's a bad one. A good program would teach algorithms, design, and team working and at least three languages, one of which should be Lisp, just because it lets them know there are other paradigms out there. That will teach flexibility and allow students to cope with legacy and oddball systems. Learning Java is simply not good enough. Indeed, I would say that learning C and Smalltalk would give anyone the tools to walk into a Java post with a week's notice, and many other posts too.
Get them all doing assembler, that what I say. Assemble some sense into 'em!
TWW

--
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Re:The Java vocational training quote rings true by The+Desert+Palooka · 2005-02-09 04:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Frankly, for most of the work I do (sysadmin hardware/software, networks, etc) I would rather have someone who had 2 years in CS foundations and 2+ years doing labs with 'standard' stuff like Solaris, Linux, VxVM/VCS, EMC gear, etc. from a legit institution than a newly-minted BSCS or BSEE.

Actually there's programs that address this need now. At the institution I'm at it's called "Computer Technology" and it focuses on application, and existing and emerging technologies. It's lighter on math, lighter on theory, and heavy on applications and administration. Truthfully it could be replaced by a mentoring program, or just some good work experience.

The CS program on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite... It's more science heavy, and math heavy (two classes from a minor in math), and less about applications (though you can use those as electives... well, a few, most don't count for credit in CS).

It's interesting to see all these vocational style programs popping up in academia... But I'm fearing that there's starting to be misconceptions about what a degree means and what a university education means... Personally I never thought it meant being taught Visio or Dreamweaver MX 2004.

I hope that we can have an Apprentence, Journeyman, Master type thing for more grunt-like work where the why doesn't matter in the near future... But while we don't have that I hope that we don't destroy our research and academic infastructure in CS trying to accomodate a lack of good job training, or just a lack of good Techology Associate Degree programs.

None of the above. by TapeCutter · 2005-02-09 01:30 · Score: 4, Funny

What about the VMS fanboy, we wear cardigans, hush puppies, tweed hats and smoke pipes. We don't normally "shop" but when the leather elbow patches can no longer hang on or the felt is just too floppy, we vist the church op-shop. We always have a pencil and pad in our pocket and a small cylindrical slide rule for a quick estimate. Tuesday trivia night is our social highlight of week and the hot chocolate and lamingtons are wonderfull. We have wives but have grown to realise sex is really just another sports activity and would much rather play with the train set in the shed.

Whoever modded the PP a Troll needs to learn how to laugh at themselves.

Viva-la-difference

Disclaimer: I know jack-shit about VMS or French spelling.

--
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.

Perl by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 01:32 · Score: 4, Informative

'Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term'

Perl fills a 'tiny short-term need'? Is that why Morgan Stanley, RyanAir, Amazon, Ticketmaster and even increasingly Google to name but a few are using it for real, business-critical applications?

I'm so sick of all this anti-Perl talk. I write powerful applications in Perl and they are definetly not 'write only'. If anyone writes a 'write only' program in any language then it is the programmer who is at fault. Perl assumes a bit of intelligence on the programmer's side, rather than adopting Java's policy of bondage. And contrary to what a previous comment said, Perl is a general purpose language (with excellent built-in data structures and regular expressions, and a convenient and expressive syntax).

This guy might have an impressive [sic] resume, but he is badly showing his ignorance about Perl.

Re:sed'ing by jallen02 · 2005-02-09 01:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

I do think you have a good point about some languages being good at different tasks. I think its even better to just look at computation from a more generic perspective to get a true picture. Computer programs are written to solve problems for the most part. Most problems will have a "problem domain" so to speak. The problem, and problem domain, are key factors in choosing a language.

System Automation - For a quick and easy automation task on a server I administer I choose a light-weight and dynamic language that lets me very expressively accomplish some task.

Big Business - Automating a 10,000 person brick and mortar company with virtually no technology. Things like ERP, CRM, and B2B (god forgive me for the buzzwords) are what are on your mind then. You need to integrate payrolls, manage sales, and integrate with other businesses and resources out there. Your problem domain is so large that multiple languages and tools will be used to fill the gap. And.. depending on your business you may even get into domain specific languages *or* invent new domain specific models of computation that are better at solving your particular problem.

So you can look at the most simple thing to a very large task and see that there are enermous differences in scope and scale, yet we are solving a problem, or a series of problems. Each problem and facet of the problem must be addressed and solved (correctly). Some of the time your model and business domain may not fit anything very well . Some of the time it will.

We have learned that OO programming tends to work reasonably well at modelling most problems in the business domain. As a system administrator you know that something like Perl or Python is quite good at solving problems in the system administration domain. As an embedded programmer you know that assembler can be used to solve problems when efficiency is absolutely required... but the point is that if you take things one level hire and look at the domain of the problem you are solving certain types of tools tend to work better than others. By knowing the TYPES of tools out there, not just one languages implementation of a concept, you can remain more flexible. If the problem is large enough and has enough scope, using a domain specific, possibly in house created/project specific, language to model the problem can be acceptable. It all just depends on the problem you are solving :)

Jeremy

I must protest by Pan+T.+Hose · 2005-02-09 01:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem isn't language designers its us developers, we don't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop, we want to use what we used before. In other words we are luddites.

I strongly disagree. Not all of us are a bunch lazy idiots as you imply. If I didn't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop I wouldn't have finished reading a second Perl 6 book yesterday, now would I? I have already spent man-months learning the language that is not even fully designed yet, so I would appreciate if you kindly exclude me--and most of Slashdotters--from your hasty generalization, for even though I would tend to agree with you that most of people in general are incompetent idiots, I believe that Slashdot community is a rare exception to this sad rule, or otherwise we wouldn't be so enthusiastically discussing the possibility of designing a Heraclitean programming language with its roots in the philosophy of ancient Greece--which nota bene would be an interesting addition to postmodern languages we already have. But even though I disagree with your premiss, I fully agree with your conclusion that Java and C# are rubbish, that of course is undeniable. But this conclusion by itself is quite useless unless we answer the question why they are the way they are. Why does the competence of your proverbial marketing department is nearly without exception reversely proportional to the technical advantages of the technology in question? When we answer this question, a lot of other answers will become clear.

--
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."

Re:I must protest by kfg · 2005-02-09 01:37 · Score: 3, Funny

I would tend to agree with you that most of people in general are incompetent idiots, I believe that Slashdot community is a rare exception to this sad rule

I must protest.

KFG

Re: sed'ing by Black+Parrot · 2005-02-09 01:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

> ADA is good for secure stuff

Actually, Ada [sic] is for big, complicated software systems that you want to be able to maintain.

Of course, maintainability is a key component of security, and Ada does offer built-in resistance to buffer overflows, but I don't think security is the primary reason for choosing Ada [sic].

> C++ is good for GUI

That claim isn't so much wrong as... baffling.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Lots of good quotes. by MattRog · 2005-02-09 01:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

One could actually argue--as I sometimes do--that the success of commercial personal computing and operating systems has actually led to a considerable retrogression in many, many respects. ...
So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture.

I'd call it "Fad-driven Development" more so than pop culture. But the lack of computer science/engineering causes fad-driven development and vice-versa. It's a feedback loop.

...the adoption of programming languages has...been somewhat accidental, and the emphasis has ...been on how easy it is to implement the programming language rather than on its actual merits and features. ... it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.

HTML, XML are prime examples of this - and also fad-driven development. Verbose, tag-based, require parsing every time, etc. -- not a very good language in any respect. Yet, people can read it. No technical intrinsic merits push XML over some other format, yet here we are.

All of these ideas could be part of both software engineering and computer science, but I fear--as far as I can tell--that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

This relates back to the failure of CS and fad-driven development.

--

Thanks,
--
Matt

Re:Lots of good quotes. by sapped · 2005-02-09 03:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

HTML, XML are prime examples of this - and also fad-driven development. Verbose, tag-based, require parsing every time, etc. -- not a very good language in any respect. Yet, people can read it. No technical intrinsic merits push XML over some other format, yet here we are.

I use XML purely to store data files for my applications. Most of the time there is no DTD or schema or anything fancy like that. However, what makes it useful for me is that I can add new parts to my data storage and my old code will still read the file correctly and will simply ignore any tags that it doesn't recognise. The new version will obviously be able to read the full file. That ability alone makes it worthwhile to use for me.

In the past I had to version number my data storage and provide conversion tools back and forth so that my customers could upgrade and degrade the files gracefully.

Now, obviously, I could have implemented such an idea myself, but we now have XML parsers and viewers all over the place, so much of the hard work is done for me already.
Re:Lots of good quotes. by cogitolv · 2005-02-09 06:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'll go a little further with this pop-culture thing. There is a law of software development that states: any technology that takes more smarts or attention than is available to the programmer, that programmer will classify it as 'stupid' and will claim it as only a product of good marketing or a mass duping of a large group of gullable people (pop culture). Alan's point is there are many in the field that don't have the background or intellectual rigor to understand what good programming languages provide, thus [my interp] those people will label those languages or features as 'stupid' or unuseful. I'm worried that your opinions of HTML and XML fall into this category. So, sir, you may be in that pop culture that Alan complains about. The only way to be sure you are not is to provide some good arguments supporting you position.

--
Well, sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

Favourite quote by Z0mb1eman · 2005-02-09 01:43 · Score: 3, Funny

If you look at software today, through the lens of the history of engineering, it's certainly engineering of a sort--but it's the kind of engineering that people without the concept of the arch did. Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

SF The analogy is even better because there are the hidden chambers that nobody can understand.

--
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.

memorable quotes ? by TTL0 · 2005-02-09 01:47 · Score: 2, Funny

'Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term,'

Which is why for years people have been writing CGI, QA and Admin scripts in Smalltalk.

--
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold

Re: memorable quotes ? by Sique · 2005-02-09 03:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

You don't understand what his criticism for Perl is all about. You'll understand it once you try to implement Perl in Perl (as an exercise you could start to implement the Perl RegExp in Perl without using Perl RegExp).

(Non-ANSI, but original) Lisp is a language that is implemented in itself in about half a letter page.

Even Smalltalk can be implemented in Smalltalk in a quite compact manner.

Perl needs a quite large compiler to turn Perl code into the runtime code. And every new feature in Perl is done in a way, that the compiler has to be changed and a formerly syntactically wrong line gets a semantic put on.

Perl is fine for what it was thought out for: To crunch large amounts of similarily structured data into human readable reports. That's what most CGIs or admin scripts are about: filtering database entries or long logfiles and converting the results into webpages or other human accessible documents.
(Or getting huge amounts of data and turning them into log file entries and data base lines.)

It is still a Practical Extraction and Report Language. Alan Kay didn't dispute it. But it gets most of it's power as a language from what Alan Kay has called "an egyptian pyramid", a huge number of bricks and buildingblocks put together by brute force and thousands of slaves, but not from its inherent design qualities.

--
.sig: Sique *sigh*
Re: memorable quotes ? by Sique · 2005-02-09 04:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now we are at the point where the good design of Lisp really shines :) You can implement Lisp very easy in every language. This makes Lisp highly portable. Once you get the Lisp-in-Lisp implementation running in any environment (which is easy, because the Lisp-in-Lisp is so short), you can be assured that your Lisp implementation works exactly as all the other Lisp implementations everywhere, because you have only one program that has to be tested for compatibility. All the other Lisp programs you can run inside the Lisp-in-Lisp environment.

And if you change the Lisp environment (by adding extensions to the language), you will surely implement them in Lisp, and magically they run everywhere you originally got Lisp-in-Lisp running. Differently in Perl, where extensions to the Perl language core are implemented in C, and use hundreds of files which have to be ported to a new system. A compatibility test for Perl has to check lots of features of the underlying system libraries for C, and because from system to system they differ slighty, you have such subtle differences like those documented in FAQ Part 8.

In comparision a compatibility test for Lisp just checks if the Lisp-in-Lisp is running smoothly. If you get half a page of Lisp running correctly, you get Lisp running correctly. This opens a lot of other possibilities: You can optimize your Lisp interpreter for your system without fear of losing the compatibility to any Lisp code you may get from other people. You can do profiling and selfoptimizing without fearing to stumble at obscure or esoteric features seldom used by anyone, but just a single library you depend on, which in turn creates nearly non trackable Heisenbugs (once you know in which part they occur, you don't know at which data, and once you know the data that triggers the bug, you don't know in which part of your software they occur) with your specially optimized version of Perl.

All together: The big advantage of Lisp is that it is completely self contained. Quite differently to Perl, which is contained in a somewhat POSIX compliant C based environment.

--
.sig: Sique *sigh*

You IDIOT! by ggvaidya · 2005-02-09 02:05 · Score: 5, Funny

You have got it so backwards, I don't even know where to start! For starters, C++ is NOT older than C - it's C's f***ing descendant! C was invented in the 1980s by the Borland corporation (it was invented as Turbo C), which was competing with Microsoft's QBASIC. C++ was created by Microsoft as an attack on Borland - perhaps you've heard of Visual C++?? Have you *ever* heard of Turbo C++? But you probably haven't, cos you're such a screwed up newbie.

Oh, and BTW - an *operating system* in C? Jesus, where have you *BEEN*! Don't you know that almost all the OS's existing today - Windows, SCO/Linux, even MacOS - have been written in C?? And that's why there's so many bugs in all of them - because C is practically *impossible* to write good code in. That's why Apple is now switching over to Objective C, which is kinda like Apple C++. I've heard that Windows XP was written in Visual C++. And SCO/Linux was going to be ported to Java, until Microsoft paid Sun off to kill the deal and IBM sued SCO for violating their big-company-with-major-trademarks-shoots-itself-in -the-leg patent.

Thankfully, the field is being revolutionised by people like Richard Stallman, who wrote gcc (the GNU C compiler), gvim and gnome, among many other open source programs. Finally, an advanced programming language like Perl can be used FOR FREE. Without a shadow of a doubt, Perl is the language of the future, even though it's still pretty young and all.

(And no, HTML is NOT a language. Go a learn a REAL programming language like Javascript, n00b).

My professor on Perl by mi · 2005-02-09 02:12 · Score: 3, Funny

A "write-only language"...

--
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.

Egotism in its purest form... by Leadhyena · 2005-02-09 02:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

Maybe I didn't RTFA as thoroughly as most, but this guy comes off as exremely self-centered. First off, every language has its purpose, and just because some of these languages aren't as well designed as the author's languages (like the comments "Java could have been great, just look at Squeak"), that's not a good enough excuse to bash them.

The reason Perl is so popular is because it is SOOO easy to throw something together in no time at all that can access databases, websites, and so forth, without all of the messy class coding of the other languages. Would I want to write something huge in perl? Heck no. Because Perl is made for scripting and not for large projects. Same thing for PHP and and all of those languages he likens to Egyptian pyramids made from brute force.

Also, I don't know about him, but I know that at Purdue the CS degree requires the authoring of a compiler, some study of programming language theory, some classes about Database Theory (I can't remember the last time a vocational class taught tuple calculus and normalization), as well as some high level algorithm knowledge. I would consider at least that degree program a step above just some Java vocational classes, and his comment only highlights how egotistical he really is.

Just because he's really smart doesn't give him the excuse to be a real jackass.

Re:Egotism in its purest form... by bighoov · 2005-02-09 03:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

Maybe the Purdue CS degree is above average. He did say "most", not "all". My sense is that the spirit of his comments are right. Industry expects a certain set of skills for entry level jobs, which unfortunately has lead many real CS programs to shift their focus from science to skills training. Alan Kay has earned his place as a leader in computer science. I'd suggest listening to what he has to say instead of dismissing him as a jackass.
Re:Egotism in its purest form... by soundofthemoon · 2005-02-09 04:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Alan Kay may come off as a jackass in your reading of the interview, but he's nothing like that in person. He's one of those people who is so smart it's hard to follow him sometimes, but he never really talks down to people. I think his enthusiasm and passion about these subjects is admirable.

I would agree with Alan's comment about a modern CS degree being a Java vocational program. I've been trying to hire software developers lately, and every resume I see has nothing but Java and web apps on it, and no breadth of experience. In my career I've programmed in assembly, microcode, Pascal, Smalltalk, C, C++, LISP, HyperTalk, PostScript, Java, PERL, PHP and a bunch of languages most people reading this wouldn't recognize (anyone know Mesa?). I've worked on GUI apps, productivity tools, virtual machines, object persistence, web apps, app frameworks, development tools, etc. etc. I'm not trying to be a braggart here - I'm just saying that from my perspective someone who has spent their whole carreer writing web/database apps in Java is barely competent as a software developer. I'd consider them more of a software technician, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's quite different from having the kind of skills and experience that make one a master in the field. And from Alan Kay's perspective, the view must be much more disappointing.
Re:Egotism in its purest form... by dr.badass · 2005-02-09 07:19 · Score: 3, Informative

First off, every language has its purpose, and just because some of these languages aren't as well designed as the author's languages, that's not a good enough excuse to bash them.

When someone like Alan Kay, with a very inventive and academic background, criticizes the workhorse stuff out in the "real world", he's pointing out where the ideas don't work, rather than the thing itself. Basically, he's thinking on another level than the one most of us are.

He's not really saying Java just sucks. He's Java sucks insofar as it was founded on some bad ideas. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't do real work in it. It just means that there are limits to what you can do with it. Someone like Alan Kay can't really get over this, which is part of what makes him a genius.

Paul Graham (who, of course, is a big fan of Lisp), has written quite a bit on language design. I think I would have reacted to this interview the same way you have had I not read The Hundred-Year Language, and others. I highly recommend them.

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Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.

Re:There is hope yet by Cmdr+TECO · 2005-02-09 02:22 · Score: 2, Informative

I am curious about the Burroughs machine mentioned in the interview. Can anyone give me an overview of it?

a. The Architecture of the Burroughs B5000 - 20 Years Later and Still Ahead of the Times?
b. Early Descriptor Architectures in Capability-Based Computer Systems (nice book -- great to see it available again)

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echo 33676832766569823265328479713269.8639857989Pq | dc

I know a vast amount about computer science by kahei · 2005-02-09 02:33 · Score: 4, Funny

LISP had it first, LISP did it better, and LISP is all you need. Let's look at why LISP is so good that it has to be mentioned ad nauseam whenever a language discussion comes up.

1 -- LISP is simple and elegant. LISP has a pure functional design, without any of that procedural/imperative/OO junk that people use to actually write software that does stuff. LISPs purity and simplicity keep it in the lab, where languages belong.

2 -- LISP is old. You name it, LISP implemented it way back when. Things like visual form designers, refactoring IDEs, regular expressions and the like don't count -- those aren't real language features, just modern rubbish that helps people do boring jobs.

3 -- LISP is highly intuitive. I've used LISP for 70 years, man and boy, and that's why I realise just how intuitive LISP is. Starting off, some people find LISP a bit daunting, and they keep wanting to write 'a + b' instead of '(add a b)' just because it's "shorter" and "clearer". In fact, though, it only takes a few short years of practise with purely functional languages to find LISP completely intuitive.

4 -- LISP is used by real professionals -- computer scientists, AI researchers from the 1980s, and Douglas Hofstatder. The post-LISP languages are used by hired help -- engineers and whatnot. I'm sorry to have to say it, but it's true. If you want to get _paid_ for programming, sure, use C# or PHP or something like that; _gentlemen_ will continue to use LISP.

Well, I hope that's finished the 'debate' (if indeed there can be debate about what is self-evident). LISP is better, and that's that. Remember, it's not what you can _do_ with a language that matters; its how much you can _say_ about it.

Incidentally, this post is a JOKE. LISP has exactly the strengths and weaknesses you would expect from a pure functional language. I just think it's weird that people always jump up and go 'LISP IS BETTER OH YES IT IS' when a language discussion comes round.

--
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.

Re:Two Grumpy Old Guys by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 02:39 · Score: 2, Informative

Kay works a lot on new ideas, many of them being incorporated into Squeak and Croquet. The ideas are still rough, though, so in some cases I don't know if I'd say they were accessible yet. Such is the nature of research. (But even kids are using Squeak.)

Alan Turing Award winner? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-09 02:42 · Score: 2, Funny

...Alan Turing Award winner.

Does that mean he passed the Turing test?

Fascinating by chaoticset · 2005-02-09 03:05 · Score: 2, Interesting

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

Ah, like English. Or, for that matter, everything else ever invented or discovered, accidentally or otherwise. Fire burns down houses. Wheels are attached to cars that run people over and pollute the environment. Light bulbs enable light pollution.

The quote is another example of stating something obvious in a way that seems profound.

--

-----------------------
You are what you think.

Re: I had Heraclitus once by tinkerton · 2005-02-09 03:17 · Score: 2, Funny

he probably had what Johnny Cash called "ring of fire"

Lessions to be learned? by grumbel · 2005-02-09 03:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

So what are the lessions to be learned from languages written in the past?

- API/Libraries are important, more important than the language itself, no matter how good your language is, if you don't have a bunch of libaries ready to use the common man will solve his problems faster and better in another language. (Perl/CPAN)

- good syntax is important, do/end are no fun, {}'s are easier to read to the common man (C)

- interoperability with other languages is important (C-libraries exported to scripting languages)

At least for me that seems to be the points that make a language successfull, while not necesarrily beatifull. Most of the powerfull, but mostly failed languages, of the past (Smalltalk, Lisp) seem to either ignore most or all of these points, worse they come with their own VM, their own development environment and such, so unless you do it their way you are mostly (hard to write or ship a few ten-line long script, hard/impossible into a native-binary, etc.).

Re:I must protest, too by BorgCopyeditor · 2005-02-09 03:41 · Score: 2, Funny

aggregious ... errors

It's "egregious." I should know. I have a Ph.D. ;-)

--
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.

Let's hear it for old quotable compuscience farts! by kronocide · 2005-02-09 03:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

*sigh* I'm sick of listeing to these old academics whine about the real world.

I mean, doesn't this say it all:

Once you have something that grows faster than education grows, youre always going to get a pop culture.

Oh yeah, because pop culture is bad. We don't want something to expand so fast we lose our academic control over it.
Oh, looky here! ---> . That's the world's tiniest violine playing...

Or:

One could actually argue--as I sometimes do--that the success of commercial personal computing and operating systems has actually led to a considerable retrogression in many, many respects.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? So it would have been better if all these lusers (those not in academia) had never got their hands on computers? Or was U.C.L.A. supposed to supply them to us?

I dont spend time complaining about this stuff, because...

Uh, right.

I have worked in the computer business as system technician, programmer, CTO, and product manager for about 15 years--have even been on some panels in academic seminars in connection with RDF and the Semantic Web. The reason these guys (and I do believe generalizations are in order) disagree with how things are done in the industry is simply because they don't understand it. It's really that simple. They are different areas of expertise.

Computer science research has its own goals. Scalability, design-for-change, open interfaces, those kinds of things are what it's all about. In the private sector on the other hand, one thing rules: cash flow. Cash flow makes the world go 'round, and it will take precedence over scalability, modular design, and documented interfaces eleven days per week. It's not stupidity, it's really very rational. Cash flow is not about economy in the simplest sense: it would be cheaper for me to buy a one-year public transport ticket instead of buying one every month, but I don't have that ammount of cash lying around, so it's still better (in a completely rational sense) for me to get the more expensive monthly solution rather than take a loan or whatnot. That is the reason why quick fixes are sometimes the smartest way of doing things. Something else is almost always smarter than the "best" design. (Insert "cost of last 10%" rant here.)

This is especially true about all small and medium-sized Internet companies that--recently burst bubbles notwithstanding--have created a huge new economy. They are employing millions of people around the world (directly or indirectly) and have introduced computer usage to pretty much every individual in the developed world.

This did not happen because everyone was stupid and did everything backwards, and it's not "unfortunate."

It also didn't happen because the academic institutions made it happen. Academia did not turn HTML into a de facto standard. In fact, if HTML had been as complex as RDF, and treated as strictly, there's a good chance the Web had never happened. The sloppyness of implementation that is a headache to most Web developers today may very well have been one reason why the Web grew so quickly. And there is still a good chance that RDF will never make it into the mainstream, it depends on how anal the developers of it plan to be. (Although even if it doesn't, it will probably still be used at 10 huge corporations around the world that are big enough to have their own in-house academic institutions.)

Keep teaching us about scalability, and if you want to listen we will explain something about what makes mainstream businesses able to pay for systems development at all.

Clarification by ggvaidya · 2005-02-09 03:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well, I was trying to be funny, but obviously it didn't come off too well. But shush, don't tell anyone: I really love the ubercomplex discussions going on.

I shall take a contrarian stance. by Medievalist · 2005-02-09 04:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

In the private sector on the other hand, one thing rules: cash flow. Cash flow makes the world go 'round, and it will take precedence over scalability, modular design, and documented interfaces eleven days per week. It's not stupidity, it's really very rational. Cash flow is not about economy in the simplest sense: it would be cheaper for me to buy a one-year public transport ticket instead of buying one every month, but I don't have that ammount of cash lying around, so it's still better (in a completely rational sense) for me to get the more expensive monthly solution rather than take a loan or whatnot. That is the reason why quick fixes are sometimes the smartest way of doing things. Something else is almost always smarter than the "best" design. (Insert "cost of last 10%" rant here.)

Shortsightedness is not really the virtue you are painting it to be.

Buy the monthly right now, then eat beans and rice however many months it takes to save for a yearly. Then buy the yearly, and use the money you would have spent on monthlies to make other cost-cutting investments (and a nice steak dinner reward, of course).

For example, in my previous home I cut my water and sewer bills by 80% and my electric bill by 40% by investing in slightly more expensive appliances. Payback ended up being less than two years, because the cost of electricity and water has gone up faster than expected.

The unwillingness to take a hit now (those rice and beans meals) for a payoff later is the downfall of many businesses. Optimizing investments is not as simple as you make it out to be, and cash flow is a simplistic meter that does not apply to all business situations.

Substituting high liquidity for high efficiency is still over-generalizing; as people often say when discussing computer languages, every problem is unique and may require a unique solution. Every business likewise.

Comparison of Programming Languages by bitswapper · 2005-02-09 04:52 · Score: 2, Informative

This article has an interesting comparison between C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl.

Re:On the contrary by sconeu · 2005-02-09 05:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

At UC Santa Cruz, we went through this back in the early '80s (83-84). In fact, the students even organized to protest the theory-based curriculum. (OT: Any old CISSA members out there?)

Of course, we wanted courses in VAX Assembler and C. When I got out into the real world, it turned out that the theory that I had learned was of much more practical use than the so-called "practical" classes I took -- with the exception of C, which I learned on my own.

--
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.

Too bad by mattr · 2005-02-09 05:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

I really liked the end of the interview and copied it to read again a few times. But felt a bit disappointed in that Kay is boosting Squeak and Lisp, dissing Perl, and yet seems to promote many ideas that are becoming mantra by perl people.

Given that the interior of Perl is (at least used to, I don't know about now or Parrot) ugly, scary stuff, I would have liked to hear Kay's take on what Larry Wall and some other pretty bright people are trying to do with perl and parrot now, and whether he thinks their philosophies are great or slumbering. Might be a flame war to end all flame wars, but relatively untutored (well Niklaus Wirth's book was my beginning at a young age and according to Kay I've probably been damaged by it) I was excited to see all the ideas that were being stolen and discussed from other languages for Perl 6. Late typing, rebuilding the language from inside at a "meta" level, these all sound great. I'm also interested time and again with Haskell and perhaps it is because I subconsciously have an urge for cleanliness like the 1/2 page of Lisp.

Would parrot written in Lisp be better? I've liked Perl and the libraries of course, but if I could do without them I wonder if Kay would recommend Squeak, something like Erlang (?), or what. The talk of the ancient computer that had 1000 times better "lost" technology than today was intriguing but there was too little about it, and it seemed to talk almost about the Cell processor there.

I feel a great amount of warmth and wisdom from Kay and it is probably too much to ask him to light the way, but if he is going to go shooting down most of the world, even people who are seriously wanting something better and trying to build it, I think he has some responsibility to address it, or at least to mention how Squeak can solve all our problems. Well I guess I have a week of surfing to find my own answers. When I looked at Squeak the last couple of times a while ago I had to turn away from it (down the dark path?) but at the very least I'd like to be intelligent about my choices.

To me perl and the people at perlmonks.org are interested in a language that assists creativity and the wild Larry juggernaught and the wizards involved in Perl 6 deserve more than Kay handed out. I hope this is not his last parting shot but the first of many challenging, wonderful discussions by Kay about how we can get to the next level.

Re:Heraclitus by cogitolv · 2005-02-09 07:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

It appears Hericlitus did have something to say about all the perl-lisp-c++-java flamewars!
Hericlitus said that the universe was nothing but conflict and strife. What was experienced was illusion. What there is is a constant incessant flux, a raging fire. What is real is the logos (the binary code), that which lies beneath the fire. http://n4bz.org/gsr/gsr7.htm

--
Well, sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

Why Ada is good by Julian+Morrison · 2005-02-09 08:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

...because it's not just "foreach n in X loop", it's "declare type Array_Bounds is Integer range 1 .. 5; begin for I in Array_Bounds'Range loop [...] end loop; end;".

A proper type system is worth a heck of a lot more than a few characters saved typing!

Re:What 60s GUIs is he talking about? by pHDNgell · 2005-02-09 08:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

OK, I'll bite. I don't remember any GUIs in the 60s... what were they?

check wikipedia (and update it if you find anything else)

--
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.

Now that's just plain wrong by Julian+Morrison · 2005-02-09 08:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

It has memory management, quite a sensible sort actually. First, you can manually deallocate things (like "free"). Second, you can take complete control of the memory allocation of a type via "storage pools" - allowing tricks like mark-and-release or garbage collection. Third, it's clever enough to free the storage for everything of a particular type, when that type goes out of scope. All of which makes a lot more sense than C's rather brute-force "malloc" and "free".

Also, Ada leaves C in the dust for bit-flipping. You can specify layout of data down to the byte-order and bit-width, the exact modulus of modular integers, the exact delta of fixed-point numbers, etc etc.

Personally I think the reasons Ada didn't catch on much more are down to an early lack of good compilers, and a stagnant library (no standard way to access sockets? Is this the 1980s?).

Re: Now that's just plain wrong by Black+Parrot · 2005-02-10 02:05 · Score: 2, Informative

> > You can specify layout of data down to the byte-order and bit-width,

> Replace "can" with "must", because what some view as a priviledge, others will find an obligation.

Except that it's not an obligation in Ada. It's an option available for when you need it. I almost never use it.

> > Ada didn't catch on much more are down to an early lack of good compilers

> Which was a direct consequence of language overcomplexity.

Yes, Ada overchallenged the compiler technology of the time. That problem has long since been surmounted: you can now get the GPL'd source code for a compliant Ada compiler (GNAT), and you can get commercial support for it if you wish (Ada Core Technologies).

> Writing a complete, minimally adequate C compiler is 6-month's work for a talented undergrad. Writing a complete Ada compiler...?

Given that the compilers already exist and are freely available, that's hardly an issue when choosing a language for an application. I happen to prefer the language that lets me write minimally buggy, highly maintainable code quickly, even if it did take someone more work to create the compiler.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Yes, you can do that, RTFM by Julian+Morrison · 2005-02-09 12:48 · Score: 2, Funny

You can do all that stuff, but I'm not the manual, go read it. Don't forget Ada was amongst other things designed for programming on the bare metal, for embedded (military) apps.

Complexity has a constant minimum by Julian+Morrison · 2005-02-09 18:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

Those aren't even part of C. They're function calls in an external library, and have nothing to do with the language itself.

That's part of the reason C succeeded, and Ada failed. Ada made specific language concepts for things like memory management and threading, which C left for external libraries.

Which is, in its way, the reason C "failed", too. It seems to be a law of programming that the complexity required to implement a real-world useful language has a constant minimum. If you leave it out of the syntax, you'll have to include it in the library. And if you leave it out of the standard library, it will be implemented differently in each implementation's nonstandard library - trashing the language's supposed portability.

In other words, C isn't really a language. It's a core upon which a language can be built. C plus the standard library plus posix is a language. And even that relies heavily on the preprocessor to mutate your code to match local implementation quirks.

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