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Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

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Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#51

Post by agumonkey »

gecko wrote: post #44
brusch64 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the "Windows culture": WinProc programming was indeed pretty horrible. Didn't really program a lot in WinProc - but I've cut my teeth with MFC which was supposed to make it better. They broke down the big switch in the program and created classes (the c in MFC) and macros. The VCL of Borland was more abstracted, but we've used MFC. I am pretty happy that I don't have to do this any more. When I started with…

You know what's ridiculous? I totally agree that WndProc was horrible. But the web community is now reinventing it so directly that all I can do is bang my head repeatedly on my desk. Have you seen Facebook's Flux/Dispatcher framework, for example? The Dispatcher is usually a massive switch statement that takes a single argument, which will be a record field that corresponds with the event type. It's exactly like swi…

It kinda frightens me too. Partly because reinvention at that scale is a bit sad, partly because it took me far too long to unplug myself from the current trends thrill and realize it.

Somehow it also says something, whatever the underlying structure, local and native VS remote and abstracted (dom/js), some patterns keeps coming back over and over.

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#52

Post by agumonkey »

laumars wrote: post #33
mmahemoff wrote: post #12

"If he start­ed Jorf in 1987, that means he start­ed it around the same time Perl 1.0, (and the syn­tax is much nicer ;-). He start­ed it around the same time Gui­do start­ed Python." This is quite interesting as it's not really clear a better syntax would automatically make it "win" over other languages, or even that it's a significant factor. Maybe a prerequisite in most cases, but I think here are a lot of other f…

> * The nature of the early adopter individuals and companies (thought experiment: young Mark Zuckerberg sits down one night and proceeds to write thefacebook v0.0.0.0.1 in Perl, not PHP) A couple of points: 01) PHP was already very well established when Zuckerberg wrote thefacebook. As was Perl, Python, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, and a few Java solutions (such as Tomcat) too. While it feels like Facebook has been around…

Gosh, so weird to see that perl snippet.

I love the empty degrees of separation predicates, https://gist.github.com/philfreo/7257723#file-gistfile1-pl-L...

I can't help but to think he should have gone list monadic {and lisp too but well, enough dogma}:

http://dorophone.blogspot.com/2011/04/deep-emacs-part-1.html

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#54

Post by brusch64 »

pjmlp wrote: post #34
brusch64 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the "Windows culture": WinProc programming was indeed pretty horrible. Didn't really program a lot in WinProc - but I've cut my teeth with MFC which was supposed to make it better. They broke down the big switch in the program and created classes (the c in MFC) and macros. The VCL of Borland was more abstracted, but we've used MFC. I am pretty happy that I don't have to do this any more. When I started with…

Coming from a Borland background, MFC was pretty bad when compared with any of its frameworks. However in MFC's defense I think one can blame it on Microsoft's study group. I read somewhere that the Afx prefix came from their original design. A framework close in spirit to OWL, but their study group deemed it to high level. So they made it a thin wrapper over Win16 instead. On my case, the few cases I was forced outs…

I've heard the same thing about the Afx macros and the plan for another more ambitious framework.

In my opinion the biggest obstacles for MFC were: * a pretty bad C++ compiler (the first good MS C++ compiler was the one with Visual Studio 2003 as much as i remember) * that the core group were "old school" C guys that either couldn't design a better object oriented system or thought that it would be to hard for the "normal" developers

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#55

Post by dahart »

z3r0d4v3 wrote: post #38
Johnny_Brahms wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, that is a bit like the iTunes EULA. You are not allowed to use it to make weapons of mass destruction. Maybe it is removed by now, but I found it hillarious back in the day.

yeah, let me just upload the last few songs - then my WMD is ready to rock that continent vs an IDE - kinda...

Weapons of Mass Disco? Weapons of Mass Droppin beats?

In all seriousness, since we have used loud music against our enemies, and many consider it torture, and it was banned by the UN, there may be probable cause for the anti war clause.

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#56

Post by gecko »

gecko wrote: post #44
brusch64 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the "Windows culture": WinProc programming was indeed pretty horrible. Didn't really program a lot in WinProc - but I've cut my teeth with MFC which was supposed to make it better. They broke down the big switch in the program and created classes (the c in MFC) and macros. The VCL of Borland was more abstracted, but we've used MFC. I am pretty happy that I don't have to do this any more. When I started with…

You know what's ridiculous? I totally agree that WndProc was horrible. But the web community is now reinventing it so directly that all I can do is bang my head repeatedly on my desk. Have you seen Facebook's Flux/Dispatcher framework, for example? The Dispatcher is usually a massive switch statement that takes a single argument, which will be a record field that corresponds with the event type. It's exactly like swi…

And the comment is now a blog post with more context for those who were lucky enough never to write raw Windows code: http://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#57

Post by dahart »

Question- the article's premise seems to be that a language's popularity may be based on timing and language features, as opposed to language authors "selling" their language. How did Perl and Python gain "traction", if you will? Was it organic and due to people finding them and seeing they were better, or due more to Larry and Guido pushing the languages and getting the word out, or other factors, or a combination?

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#59

Post by hobs »

V-2 wrote: post #39
nefitty wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jorf" is just an ugly word. It also evokes guttural body sounds like "barf" and "urgh", the kind someone makes when they're sick... It might be just from a native English speaker's perspective. I know English in general is not an appealing language to some ears from non-English speaking countries.

Thanks for shedding some light on it. Personally I quite like the sound of English (my native tongue being Polish), and "jorf" doesn't sound to me any worse than Jeff or Ralph :) but obviously I don't have the same sensitivity as native speakers.

Interesting you say that, you may not know that Ralph is also slang for "to vomit".

I don't think "to Jeff" is anything yet.

Re: Forgotten Language: Jorf could have been Python or Ruby (2005)

#60

Post by tjr »

Reason077 wrote: post #25
nefitty wrote: post #3

Well, that name probably didn't help much either.

Yeah. "Josephine’s Recipe Fil­er"? JORF?! It all just sounds so un-cool compared to "Perl" or "Python". Not being open-source wouldn't have helped either.

Make it GPL, assign copyright to the FSF, and release it as GNU JORF. Sounds much better.
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