Scripting provides the imperative edge to tasks that are essentially declarative
When this barrier gets hazier, you have scripting lanaguages that look like programming languages, and vice versa.
The real danger is that of scripters or programmer failing to understand the implications of moving to the other domain. Thats when you have, for eg, the web page from hell - asp/jsp that creates a page full of javascript that creates html which embeds a call to another jsp/asp which opens a socket to include the contents of another asp/jsp. Programmers and scripters live for this kind of masochistic fun.
Here're my tips to keep both sides productive and respecting each other:
Have one predominant style:scripting or programming:That way everyone agrees on the pecking order. if you dont like it, jump ship.
Define roles that compartmentalize scripting or programmingThat way nobody gets in anybody's way.The web scripter sticks to jsp/asp/whatever, and calls compiled code developed by the programmer to do the heavy duty stuff.this code does not have any UI code in it.
all ye who denouce vb might want to take your heads out of the sand once in a while, for here are the facts:
#1. Languages dont kill programming, people do: i dunno about you unix types, but most of us plain people were born and raised on a staple diet of Dos and gw-basic, and the very technical lapses that you speak of were sheer joy to use and learn programming with. hey, i could redim my array at will- which means without knowing anything as esoteric as pointers and memory allocation, i could use the knowledge i had (arrays are things that hold a number of things of the same kind) and dynamically change the way my program worked (i can add more things to this array without having to know how many will be there) . And that line between those coordinates were right out of my coordinate geometry class, so i could relate. Hell i could even picture the line this way. so what if ole bacus and naur would frown at it? I got it, and more'n that, it showed a pretty picture on the screen, just like that! I wrote a whole 2d graphics editor with gwbasic. that was the reason the first c++ project i ever attempted was a 3d graphics engine.I went on to learn assemly language, pascal, c, c++, apl (well, i read about it atleast, and hand-wrote some programs - gotta love the dels and curls) and java.In fact, I learned to appreciate the features that other languages had because I had to learn how to implement those the hard way in basic.
bottom line - a good programmer always codes correctly : he'd make sure all his variables were strongly typed (even if he's using basic and it doesnt enforce types) if the code demands it, and he'll write perfectly object oriented code in C if thats whats needed.wake up and look beyond petty language differences to see the general programming form. there is no spoon.
as for vb, is there another ide that makes gui programming any easier - in the m$ world or linux?
#2.The end is near: building software will no longer be a cottage industry: Have you notice that software is generally moving to the more abstract level than concrete? java, ejb's and xml web services are heralding an increasingly abstractization (if thats a word, you know what i mean) of software. soon glue languages (read scripting) are going to be used more often in server side scenarios than before - not because core languages cannot do the job better, but because it will be more efficient to string together components (built using core languages) into bigger components, and eventually apps. So even if you thought of VB as a dimwit's scripting language, its going to be there, and used by the weekend code warriors and the joe nobodies, so help them god! if its no longer going to be monarchy of the nerds, why not join the others, and become their heads of state?
So pretty please (as Mr.Wolf said), with sugar on top, change the f***in attitude!
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Here're my tips to keep both sides productive and respecting each other:
#1. Languages dont kill programming, people do: i dunno about you unix types, but most of us plain people were born and raised on a staple diet of Dos and gw-basic, and the very technical lapses that you speak of were sheer joy to use and learn programming with. hey, i could redim my array at will- which means without knowing anything as esoteric as pointers and memory allocation, i could use the knowledge i had (arrays are things that hold a number of things of the same kind) and dynamically change the way my program worked (i can add more things to this array without having to know how many will be there) . And that line between those coordinates were right out of my coordinate geometry class, so i could relate. Hell i could even picture the line this way. so what if ole bacus and naur would frown at it? I got it, and more'n that, it showed a pretty picture on the screen, just like that! I wrote a whole 2d graphics editor with gwbasic. that was the reason the first c++ project i ever attempted was a 3d graphics engine.I went on to learn assemly language, pascal, c, c++, apl (well, i read about it atleast, and hand-wrote some programs - gotta love the dels and curls) and java.In fact, I learned to appreciate the features that other languages had because I had to learn how to implement those the hard way in basic.
bottom line - a good programmer always codes correctly : he'd make sure all his variables were strongly typed (even if he's using basic and it doesnt enforce types) if the code demands it, and he'll write perfectly object oriented code in C if thats whats needed.wake up and look beyond petty language differences to see the general programming form. there is no spoon.
as for vb, is there another ide that makes gui programming any easier - in the m$ world or linux?
#2.The end is near: building software will no longer be a cottage industry: Have you notice that software is generally moving to the more abstract level than concrete? java, ejb's and xml web services are heralding an increasingly abstractization (if thats a word, you know what i mean) of software. soon glue languages (read scripting) are going to be used more often in server side scenarios than before - not because core languages cannot do the job better, but because it will be more efficient to string together components (built using core languages) into bigger components, and eventually apps. So even if you thought of VB as a dimwit's scripting language, its going to be there, and used by the weekend code warriors and the joe nobodies, so help them god! if its no longer going to be monarchy of the nerds, why not join the others, and become their heads of state?
So pretty please (as Mr.Wolf said), with sugar on top, change the f***in attitude!