Darren New schrieb:
> Yeah. That's definitely a change driven by new hardware paradigms, tho. 
> Besides that obvious change, what else, tho?  What would make it easier 
> to write documentation?

Docman? Javadoc?

Sure, Docman is not /really/ part of the core language, but it can be 
used as such. Javadoc comes closer to being part of the language, as it 
has been integral part of Sun's Java SDK since early days.

Doesn't C# include some mechanism along those lines, too?


 > To avoid security problems?

I guess this would require a proper definition of "security problems".


 > To get multiple people interacting on one code base?

You mean, something like version management built into the language? I 
guess there's no real need for that - external version management tools 
do quite a good job on this one, and modern IDEs do quite a good job at 
integrating them with the development.

Integrating them into the programming language would actually be 
counter-productive, as its scope would be restricted to the language 
source code, and make it difficult to also manage other resources needed 
to compile a program.


 > Or the perennially favorite, "reusable code"?

I think practice has shown that the benefit of core reuse is limited to 
some standard classes: Container libraries; GUI frameworks; stuff like that.

At the application level, it may actually be counter-productive: When 
you need a tool to put nails into wood, any attempt to re-use components 
of a screwdriver will prevent you from designing a proper hammer.

But it appears to me that as far as libraries are concerned, OOP has 
been a tremendous success regarding code re-use.


>> This is probably the case in business software, which is a different 
>> animal anyway, but software quality hasn't been playing a /too/ big 
>> role in consumer software, 
> 
> Possibly because it's too hard with current languages. Too easy to make 
> mistakes that cost too much to find. But that's exactly the sorts of 
> things that HLLs, structured programming, and OOP were supposed to help 
> with.

That may have been the motivation to /invent/ them. But in the realm of 
consumer software, their actual /use/ was much more motivated by 
allowing to write much more complex applications.

> I'm just hoping that .NET or C++ isn't the pinacle of software language 
> design. ;-?

Not bloody likely :-)

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