From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <3E8F2124.40400@nyc.rr.com>
Jeff Sandys wrote:
> An interesting quote about Lisp by Alan Kay in this article:
>
> http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3369
>
Thanks, I need a new sig.
--
kenny tilton
clinisys, inc
http://www.tilton-technology.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Everything is a cell." -- Alan Kay
"Kenny Tilton" <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
···················@nyc.rr.com...
> Jeff Sandys wrote:
> > An interesting quote about Lisp by Alan Kay in this article:
> >
> > http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3369
> >
>
> Thanks, I need a new sig.
>
Smalltalk is far from the greatest language ever, but it is the wellspring
from which all other great OO languages descend, IMHO. After
New Flavors (and CLOS), everything else has been downhill. Java
could have been great, but the people who should have known how
to do it all went stupid.
Scott McKay <···@attbi.com> wrote:
+---------------
| "Kenny Tilton" <·······@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
| > Jeff Sandys wrote:
| > > An interesting quote about Lisp by Alan Kay in this article:
| > > http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3369
| >
| > Thanks, I need a new sig.
|
| Smalltalk is far from the greatest language ever...
+---------------
Actually, looking at the article, I'm guessing that the quote Jeff was
referring to was *this* one:
Kay admires the great set of ideas present in LISP and refers to
it as the "greatest single programming language ever designed."
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, PP-ASEL-IA <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Scott McKay wrote:
> Java
> could have been great, but the people who should have known how
> to do it all went stupid.
Who? Gosling?? If I remember correctly, he's the first person who ported a
"version of EMACS" (i.e. Gosling EMACS) to UNIX (ca. 1981-2), removing much
Lisp'ish functionality (and much of the programmability) in the process.
As such, I'd say he has a pretty good track record of missing the point of
things...
faa
"Frank A. Adrian" <·······@ancar.org> writes:
> Scott McKay wrote:
>
> > Java
> > could have been great, but the people who should have known how
> > to do it all went stupid.
>
> Who? Gosling??
I'd guess the OP meant Steele.
--
··········@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <87r88eablg.fsf@bird.agharta.de>
Jens Kilian <···········@agilent.com> writes:
> "Frank A. Adrian" <·······@ancar.org> writes:
> > Scott McKay wrote:
> >
> > > Java could have been great, but the people who should have
> > > known how to do it all went stupid.
> >
> > Who? Gosling??
>
> I'd guess the OP meant Steele.
AFAIK Steele didn't design the language but wrote the specification:
<http://www.google.com/groups?selm=b4aq6e%244h4%241%40f1node01.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
Edi.
From: Alexander Schmolck
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <yfswui7kro0.fsf@black132.ex.ac.uk>
"Scott McKay" <···@attbi.com> writes:
> Smalltalk is far from the greatest language ever, but it is the wellspring
> from which all other great OO languages descend, IMHO.
> Java could have been great, but the people who should have known how to do
> it all went stupid.
OK, I'm intrigued now. Would you mind elaborating a bit on all these points
(why smalltalk isn't great, what the great OO languages are and how Java ought
to have been (and who the formerly clued are))?
alex
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <ey38yumprir.fsf@cley.com>
* Scott McKay wrote:
> Java could have been great, but the people who should have known how
> to do it all went stupid.
No, they went smart. They decided, for instance, that if you could
design a mediocre-but-adequate language which was acceptable to C++
programmers[1], but which nevertheless had GC and bounds checked
arrays, and get it into wide use, you would have achieved far more
than all the people pushing `technically brilliant' but not accepted
languages have ever done. So they did, and they did.
I know, I have this boring practical definition of `great' which
involves tedious things like successfully solving real-world problems
(including `avoiding buffer overflow issues' and `being used'). Sorry
about that.
--tim
Footnotes:
[1] This is not quite the same thing: acceptable to C++ programmers
-> mediocre, but not the other way around (C and Lisp for
instance are not mediocre and are also not acceptable to C++
programmers, BASIC *is* mediocre but still not acceptable...)
> I know, I have this boring practical definition of `great' which
> involves tedious things like successfully solving real-world
> problems (including `avoiding buffer overflow issues' and `being
> used'). Sorry about that.
Well, don't be surprised if you are "detained for questioning by the
masses" the next time we get hold of you!
--
Fred Gilham ······@csl.sri.com
It is also well to note that there are probably not ten hand-grenades
in the entire philosophical community. -- John Lange
From: Kenny Tilton
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <3E91A98C.5090003@nyc.rr.com>
Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> * Scott McKay wrote:
>
>>Java could have been great, but the people who should have known how
>>to do it all went stupid.
>
>
> No, they went smart. They decided, for instance, that if you could
> design a mediocre-but-adequate language which was acceptable to C++
> programmers[1], but which nevertheless had GC and bounds checked
> arrays, and get it into wide use, you would have achieved far more
> than all the people pushing `technically brilliant' but not accepted
> languages have ever done. So they did, and they did.
>
> I know, I have this boring practical definition of `great' which
> involves tedious things like successfully solving real-world problems
> (including `avoiding buffer overflow issues' and `being used'). Sorry
> about that.
The only reason it is being used is because it is so similar to C++,
precisely why it is doomed. That's not smart, that's completely
uninteresting. They went to all that trouble and expense to add 5-10
years of life to a dinosaur. What a waste, a complete failure of the
imagination. The result? Being hated even more than C++, since that at
least can run fast.
(nsubst 'mccarthy 'gosling
(nsubst 'lisp 'java (nsubst 'norvig 'visionary
'(I doubt any Java founder will be showing up forty years from
now to point out to some language-du-jour visionary that his great new
language lacks a feature Java had five decades earlier)))
--
kenny tilton
clinisys, inc
http://www.tilton-technology.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Everything is a cell." -- Alan Kay
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> > * Scott McKay wrote:
> >
> >>Java could have been great, but the people who should have known how
> >>to do it all went stupid.
> >
> >
> > No, they went smart. They decided, for instance, that if you could
> > design a mediocre-but-adequate language which was acceptable to C++
> > programmers[1], but which nevertheless had GC and bounds checked
> > arrays, and get it into wide use, you would have achieved far more
> > than all the people pushing `technically brilliant' but not accepted
> > languages have ever done. So they did, and they did.
> >
> > I know, I have this boring practical definition of `great' which
> > involves tedious things like successfully solving real-world problems
> > (including `avoiding buffer overflow issues' and `being used'). Sorry
> > about that.
>
> The only reason it is being used is because it is so similar to C++,
> precisely why it is doomed. That's not smart, that's completely
> uninteresting. They went to all that trouble and expense to add 5-10
> years of life to a dinosaur. What a waste, a complete failure of the
> imagination.
Maybe Java is doomed, I don't know -- but for the masses of production
programmers, the ones who just want to do their jobs, and aren't
particularly concerned with doing them better with each passing
year/month, Java is great. It lets them do their jobs, without
getting in the way as much. Java is a language that you can use well
without mastering, which is a great gift to most production
programmers who don't want to master their tools. Both AWT and Swing
are pretty nasty toolkits, which is a huge failing of Java's, but
given a nicer environment (say, Java/Cocoa), normal production
programmers can make some pretty reliable software. At least when
something goes wrong it doesn't usually go berserk and/or dump core.
> The result? Being hated even more than C++, since that at least can
> run fast.
Bah, Java=slow is propoganda. C++ programs tend to be overly
low-level, or slow. Java programs depend on the VM they're running
on. If you want to see a lot of Java programs running at perfectly
acceptable speeds, check Mac OS X, where Java is one of the two
preferred languages for writing apps, and you can't tell whether the
.app you just ran was written in Objective-C, or Java.
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <ey3llymw8a4.fsf@cley.com>
* Kenny Tilton wrote:
> The only reason it is being used is because it is so similar to C++,
> precisely why it is doomed. That's not smart, that's completely
> uninteresting.
Well, you know, If I could have done something as `uninteresting' as
achieving the wide use of a language whose canonical runtime doesn't
suffer from buffer overflows I'd be pretty damn pleased. I guess I
must be only interested in uninteresting things though.
> The result? Being hated even more than C++, since that at
> least can run fast.
And Java can't run fast because ... Oh yes, I remember, because it's
got *garbage collection*, and everyone knows garbage collected
languages are slow, yes indeedy, my grammy told me so, it must be
true.
Well, I think I'm done here. Lisp is obviously too interesting for
me, I should go learn Java.
--tim
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: greatest single programming language ever designed
Date:
Message-ID: <3ckujk5t.fsf@ccs.neu.edu>
Tim Bradshaw <···@cley.com> writes:
> And Java can't run fast because ... Oh yes, I remember, because it's
> got *garbage collection*, and everyone knows garbage collected
> languages are slow, yes indeedy, my grammy told me so, it must be
> true.
At least they left in the curly braces so there is *some* performance
left.