31–40 of 96 posts
Quote: By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals. I would think that by 2007 Larry Wall would have seen DrScheme (now DrRacket). You can't get a better onramp than that.
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Perl 5 has nothing to do with Perl 6 development or even releases. Even after Perl 6 is released Perl 5 will still continue to evolve and grow. At the moment Perl 6 specification gives a good evolution map for Perl 5 development. So you need not to have to ever worry about Perl 6. Perl 5 is a solid language in itself. Perl has been amazingly useful since almost 25 years now. And anybody who denies this is simply trol…
Object oriented, functional, declarative you say it Perl has it. Its amazingly flexible, easy to learn and extensible. My first programming job was in Perl back in the late 90's. Loved it, but I have to say that the OO facilities left something to be desired. I found them fatiguing. It took Java, then Smalltalk for me to really get OO. Perl requires too much mastery of mechanism just to do objects, so it's not the be…
A better way to program is with interfaces and composition via delegation, something that Java and C++ support but have no syntax for making it easy. Perl's Moose object system, on the other hand, has easy support for composition via roles and delegation via ... well, delegation :)
And, you have "extends"-style OO available if you think it's the right solution to a particular problem. So really, I think it's a fine way to learn OO. Doing things right is easier, if you decide to do them right.
(We do Java OO right at Google, but it sure involves a lot of typing and @hacky-attributes. And I've never seen good Java OO anywhere else.)
Programming is not hard. Getting people to buy your product or give you money... that's hard.
Quote: By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals. I would think that by 2007 Larry Wall would have seen DrScheme (now DrRacket). You can't get a better onramp than that.
Kids learning about computers have a slightly different set of problems to solve than programmers being paid to program. The hard part of programming is integrating with the real world; DrScheme solves that problem by making its own world.
I think I disagree with you, but have to understand what you're arguing to be sure.
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Object oriented, functional, declarative you say it Perl has it. Its amazingly flexible, easy to learn and extensible. My first programming job was in Perl back in the late 90's. Loved it, but I have to say that the OO facilities left something to be desired. I found them fatiguing. It took Java, then Smalltalk for me to really get OO. Perl requires too much mastery of mechanism just to do objects, so it's not the be…
I agree with chromatic below; Java and C++ do not teach you OO. They teach you cut-n-paste without a text editor. (When Bar extends Foo, you're copying-and-pasting Foo's code into Bar, and then tweaking it. Or at least that's how class-based OO is used a good percentage of the time.) A better way to program is with interfaces and composition via delegation, something that Java and C++ support but have no syntax for m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with chromatic below; Java and C++ do not teach you OO. They teach you cut-n-paste without a text editor. (When Bar extends Foo, you're copying-and-pasting Foo's code into Bar, and then tweaking it. Or at least that's how class-based OO is used a good percentage of the time.) A better way to program is with interfaces and composition via delegation, something that Java and C++ support but have no syntax for m…
As a Smalltalker with a decade of experience, I too find Java a bit lacking. That said, it was a better environment for OO than Perl at the time. I was able to get a feel for refactoring through Java, though. That primed me for Smalltalk and the joy of no primitive types.
I have used Java and Python extensively now and I like Perl a lot more. All three are quite usable, however.
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Kids learning about computers have a slightly different set of problems to solve than programmers being paid to program. The hard part of programming is integrating with the real world; DrScheme solves that problem by making its own world.
Do you have in mind a particular integration with the real world that is language-specific, but where DrScheme would not help a professional programmer ramp up familiarity with a Schemey way of doing it? I think I disagree with you, but have to understand what you're arguing to be sure.
Is this a reference to consultant_barbie on reddit, or is this meme more widespread?
"X is hard, let's go Y" Is this a reference to consultant_barbie on reddit, or is this meme more widespread?