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Invisible wrote:
>> has taken over the world due to historical and irrelevant reasons.)
> Well, I suppose. (Or just the people who like to feel smug for having
> found the best tool first...)
Oh, and another frequent cause is when it's really difficult to learn a tool
well, like C++ or vi, and someone has gone to that effort, then they either
assume that every *other* tool will be equally difficult (if they learned
the difficult one first) or that you'd like it just as much if only you
understood it. The latter being a *very* holy kind of approach.
> While I'm sure many race car drivers have opinions about whether
> air-cooled or water-cooled is best, you never see them *argue* about it.
Really? How do you know?
Plus, their *job* is to argue over which is best.
> They might say "my personal opinion is X", but you never see this "X is
> best, and anybody who says different is WRONG!" stuff.
That's a rather strong claim.
In any case, that was a kind of poor example, because everyone is trying to
optimize for the same thing in race driving (i.e., winning the race
according to the rules).
Do you not see arguments over which sports is best? Which brand of car is
best? Why do you think a bunch of race car drivers wouldn't get together and
loudly discuss whose car is better?
> useless *as a programming language*.
Again, I disagree. First, I expect more production code has been written in
BASIC than Haskell. Second, this would be saying that every other language
of similar capabilities is useless as a programming language, which is
clearly false if you look at (say) Excel macros, makefiles, or shell scripts.
> Well, yeah, those are probably a bit more complex though. Nobody says
> "Python is an inferior language because Chinese people use it", for
> example.
.NET is inferior because it comes from Redmond? ;-)
>>> Truth is, if you compare almost any pair of complex objects, usually
>>> one is so clearly superior to the other that there's nothing to argue
>>> about,
>>
>> Except, you know, Holy stuff.
>
> That would be the other half of that sentence, yes.
I would disagree on that.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
> I'm sure many interested people have an *opinion* about such things, but
> I've never seen anybody actually *argue* about it.
Do you tend to hang around with professional high-performance drivers?
I suspect the same is true of aircraft, but I don't hang out with pilots, so
I wouldn't know.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:21:39 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> While I'm sure many race car drivers have opinions about whether
> air-cooled or water-cooled is best, you never see them *argue* about it.
> They might say "my personal opinion is X", but you never see this "X is
> best, and anybody who says different is WRONG!" stuff.
In the right circles, you would. Race car drivers probably would say the
same thing about programming languages - that nobody gets really
passionate about them, and that certainly geeks won't argue about which
is the best.
My wife's family has spent several lifetimes doing car maintenance, and
I'm sure I could spark a debate amongst, say, my brother-in-law and my
father-in-law. ;-)
Jim
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> Well, I don't know any mechanics *personally*. But I've yet to see a bunch
> of them get into an irate shouting match about whether an adjustable
> spanner is better or worse than a well-made fixed spanner. You can see how
> there would be merits to both, and how some people might prefer one to the
> other, and they *could* spend months debating it... it's just that they
> don't.
Believe me, flame wars and "vigorous" debates are not confined to computing
related subjects. I suspect you haven't seen such debates simply because
you mostly frequent computing-oriented newsgroups and forums? Look up some
diesel vs petrol threads on car forums, a lot of people get pretty religious
about that.
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> Sure. And what I'm saying is "80s BASIC sucks so much that it's clearly
> inferior - and nobody is arguing about this".
Inferior for what purpose? If you want users (who are not programmers) of
your equipment (which has a simple CPU and small alphanumeric display) to be
able to do some simple programming to control it, then something like 80s
BASIC doesn't seem such a bad choice.
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"scott" <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
> > Sure. And what I'm saying is "80s BASIC sucks so much that it's clearly
> > inferior - and nobody is arguing about this".
>
> Inferior for what purpose? If you want users (who are not programmers) of
> your equipment (which has a simple CPU and small alphanumeric display) to be
> able to do some simple programming to control it, then something like 80s
> BASIC doesn't seem such a bad choice.
Seconded! Depends what version, too. BBC BASIC had none of the limitations
listed in the earlier post. Using BASIC to control the i/o ports on early 8-bit
Acorn machines was so easy and powerful that they're still useful for
datalogging even now. Later, big chunks of Acorn's RISC OS were written in
BASIC.
However, I can well imagine that the versions of BASIC most people are
acquainted with are extremely limited. :)
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>> Well, I suppose. (Or just the people who like to feel smug for having
>> found the best tool first...)
>
> Oh, and another frequent cause is when it's really difficult to learn a
> tool well, like C++ or vi, and someone has gone to that effort, then
> they either assume that every *other* tool will be equally difficult (if
> they learned the difficult one first) or that you'd like it just as much
> if only you understood it. The latter being a *very* holy kind of approach.
Then there are the people who, having spent ages going to the trouble of
learning something, have a vested interest in claiming that it's the
best. Because, you know, otherwise you'd be admitting that you wasted a
whole crapload of effort learning an inferior tool.
>> While I'm sure many race car drivers have opinions about whether
>> air-cooled or water-cooled is best, you never see them *argue* about it.
>
> Really? How do you know?
>
> Plus, their *job* is to argue over which is best.
>
>> They might say "my personal opinion is X", but you never see this "X
>> is best, and anybody who says different is WRONG!" stuff.
>
> That's a rather strong claim.
From what I've seen, generally racing drivers let the scoreboard speak
for itself. They tend to argue about team politics far more than
anything technological.
> In any case, that was a kind of poor example, because everyone is trying
> to optimize for the same thing in race driving (i.e., winning the race
> according to the rules).
Yeah, I suppose.
There aren't too many professions like programming where such a wide
array of problems are attacked and there's no really objective way to
decide which is the best tool for a given job. I mean, structural
engineers tackle all kinds of weird structures, but there are rigorous
mathematical models that tell you (for example) which kind of joint is
the best choice for a particular set of loading conditions.
>> useless *as a programming language*.
>
> Again, I disagree.
Well, yeah, that's because *I* said it. :-P
> First, I expect more production code has been written
> in BASIC than Haskell.
By which measurement? Number of applications? Number of lines of code?
What counts as "production"? Which dialects of BASIC count? (For
example, where I work, we have a 4,000 line QBasic monstrosity which we
use for scientific work, for reasons beyond my comprehension. Does
QBasic count? Or is that too modern?)
I'm doubtful that BASIC has more production code than Haskell in terms
of number of lines of code. OTOH, since I have no scientific data on
which to decide either way, it's kind of an empty point.
> Second, this would be saying that every other
> language of similar capabilities is useless as a programming language,
> which is clearly false if you look at (say) Excel macros, makefiles, or
> shell scripts.
Excel macros, makefiles and shell scripts are all strictly more powerful
than BASIC in at least one objective way: they all support recursion.
BASIC does not.
>> Well, yeah, those are probably a bit more complex though. Nobody says
>> "Python is an inferior language because Chinese people use it", for
>> example.
>
> .NET is inferior because it comes from Redmond? ;-)
Hehe, yeah, I've certainly seen that argument used. ;-)
>>>> Truth is, if you compare almost any pair of complex objects, usually
>>>> one is so clearly superior to the other that there's nothing to argue
>>>> about,
>>>
>>> Except, you know, Holy stuff.
>>
>> That would be the other half of that sentence, yes.
>
> I would disagree on that.
I said "when you compare two things, usually one is obviously superior
to the other, *or* both have their uses". Which seems pretty
uncontroversial to me.
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On 06/10/2010 08:44 AM, scott wrote:
>> Sure. And what I'm saying is "80s BASIC sucks so much that it's
>> clearly inferior - and nobody is arguing about this".
>
> Inferior for what purpose? If you want users (who are not programmers)
> of your equipment (which has a simple CPU and small alphanumeric
> display) to be able to do some simple programming to control it, then
> something like 80s BASIC doesn't seem such a bad choice.
What you're saying is "if you don't need a powerful language, using a
language that isn't powerful may be acceptable".
What I'm saying is "BASIC isn't powerful, and nobody would seriously
suggest that it is".
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> What you're saying is "if you don't need a powerful language, using a
> language that isn't powerful may be acceptable".
>
> What I'm saying is "BASIC isn't powerful, and nobody would seriously
> suggest that it is".
That's a little different to saying it sucks. Or maybe you were just trying
to demonstrate how "holy wars" start? ;-)
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On 06/10/2010 10:47 AM, scott wrote:
>> What you're saying is "if you don't need a powerful language, using a
>> language that isn't powerful may be acceptable".
>>
>> What I'm saying is "BASIC isn't powerful, and nobody would seriously
>> suggest that it is".
>
> That's a little different to saying it sucks.
As a tool for constructing complex software applications, it sucks. My
mistake, apparently, as in assuming that the context is obvious.
> Or maybe you were just
> trying to demonstrate how "holy wars" start? ;-)
I can't believe that I made the most uncontroversial statement possible
- "BASIC is a weak programming language" - and people are actually
disagreeing with me! o_O
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