Mad props to all the l33t COBOL programmer analysts out there!
To be fair, their task is not a simple one: to bend a very old language into new problems it was never designed to solve is an outstanding achievement.
The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
51–58 of 58 posts
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> the best programmers I know use languages that are 20 to 30 years old as their main weapon of choice (C/C++ for example). C is 40 years old and C++ is 32 years old. (Visual Basic is 20-30 years old, though.)
Well if you want to be pedantic, C++ is actually twenty eight years old (1983), but as the language evolved a lot, modern C++ is probably less than ten years old. It depends on what you can a language and what you call a dialect. C is indeed almost forty years old.
I've only recently found out that by "Modern C++" most people mean the way to write C++ as exposed by Alexandrescu's book on Generic Programming - is that what you mean too?
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#53"So why does the term “elite” become attached to certain languages over others?" Because the causality flows the other way. At any given point in time, there are certain languages that the elite programmers tend to flock to, because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person (part of what got them to "elite" in the first place), and therefore finding someone who knows that language…
because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person Yet I think the best programmers I know use languages that are 20 to 30 years old as their main weapon of choice (C/C++ for example). I'd also care to say that once you reach a certain skill level, you see beyond the language and don't find yourself looking for the latest shining new stuff.
It could be that, or it could be that the very best stuff was discovered years ago.
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, of course this is not true, there are clubs for which membership shows eliteness. This is not a physical property, it is agreed upon by the relative strata of society. This is a weak analogy. Elite clubs do not make the members elite; they are "elite" to begin with. These clubs are not admitting the janitor. On the other hand programming languages do not admit members. Anyone can pick one up and learn it, but th…
> Anyone can pick one up and learn it This is horrible to say, but, in reality, it's not anyone. Not everyone will ace the SAT or have an IQ of 140+ much like not everyone can run 100m in less than 10 seconds. Maybe anyone can learn Java or Haskell or Python, but not everyone will be capable of writing excellent (or even correct) code.
Yo dou have a point but it goes beyond standard intelligence, I think: A big curiosity towards programming is more like it (although curiosity is a large part of intelligence). Most of the so called "elite" languages are not used in widely in corporations. So, if your goal is to just make money and move up (someday) you better put all your time in Java or C++, rather than learning Haskell or the like.
An analogy could be evolutionary explanation of the peacock's tail: it has no real purpose but shows females that this guy can afford this liability without a purpose. Similarly, when a coder knows, say, Forth (without being required to do so at work), I form immediately form a certain mental picture of him/her: this guy loves programming, definitely needs a further look.
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to agree. The Internet somehow does create these weird pissing contests where people seem to want to show that they are cool and everyone else sucks. For example, in an internal mailing list where I work, there is currently a thread between two idiots over whether iPhone or Android is superior. What a completely ridiculous waste of time! The mature "elite" programmer knows that solving problems is more importa…
LAMP is better than .NET because I dont need to buy Windows Server licenses to get going. That is a fair statement. LAMP is better because only losers use stuff from MS. This is the sort of argument that you see alot of on the internet.
LAMP is better than .NET because I dont need to buy Windows Server licenses to get going.
A fair statement, but not exactly accurate :)
Even discounting the Mono stuff, there's always BizSpark or one of the cloud many providers that offer Windows/MSSQL hosting at a slightly increased price (essentially renting Windows Server licenses).
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#56"So why does the term “elite” become attached to certain languages over others?" Because the causality flows the other way. At any given point in time, there are certain languages that the elite programmers tend to flock to, because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person (part of what got them to "elite" in the first place), and therefore finding someone who knows that language…
there are certain languages that the elite programmers tend to flock to, because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person I think that's a very subjective thing to attach "elite" to. I see a lot of people jumping between languages who are ahead of the curve, but nowhere near anything I would call "elite". At the same time, some of the most "elite" programmers I've seen have been d…
You, and most of the other repliers up to this point, haven't fully thought through the implications I was making when I said there can be more than one group of "elite".
Elite embedded programmers who have been using C for 20 years will have other characteristics that set them apart from the non-elite, but are not themselves the reason for them being elite embedded programmers. And so on for other groups of elite programmers. Language geeks are just a particularly visible manifestation of the process, because it's so easy for so many people to get into, and has such concrete effects. (Perhaps less so than when you were using Python when everyone else was still using C and you could program circles around them as long as performance wasn't an issue (which it frequently isn't), but I can still confidently say there are projects around where using Erlang (for instance) can put you well ahead of anybody using a language with a worse concurrency story, no matter how skilled in that language they are. There's a time and a place for superior primitives.)
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#57I was following the essay just fine until the paragraph on clojure. What's it doing there exactly? Is he saying there are no 'elite' programming languages -- except Clojure?
He's saying exactly the reverse. Because clojure makes a traditionally hard task easy, you don't have to be 'elite' to use it.
Re: The Elite Programming Language Fallacy
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are certain languages that the elite programmers tend to flock to, because they spend more time looking out for new, good things that the average person I think that's a very subjective thing to attach "elite" to. I see a lot of people jumping between languages who are ahead of the curve, but nowhere near anything I would call "elite". At the same time, some of the most "elite" programmers I've seen have been d…
You, and most of the other repliers up to this point, haven't fully thought through the implications I was making when I said there can be more than one group of "elite". Elite embedded programmers who have been using C for 20 years will have other characteristics that set them apart from the non-elite, but are not themselves the reason for them being elite embedded programmers. And so on for other groups of elite pr…
the implications I was making when I said there can be more than one group of "elite".
Uh. Where did you say that?