[clue-cert] awk book

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 08-13 11:12, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 10:06 -0600, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> > Lots of buzz about Ruby over in Java-land due to the Ruby-on-Rails project.
> > At least one project popped up to emulate it (Trails - get it? Rails to
> > Trails? ). 
> 
> I see that Oreilly has just released a book about Ruby On Rails.  

Even some of the ColdFusion people are interested in RoR...I'd like to check
it out when I get the time to see what all the fuss is about.

> > Hani biled the guy
> > (http://www.jroller.com/page/fate/?anchor=is_paul_graham_stupider_than), I
> 
> This link points to something called Biledoc.  The name is apt, because
> that is all the writer has... a bilious rant.  I don't know if I have
> read anything by Graham, but the writer has only convinced me that I do
> not want to waste time reading his rants, not that Graham is an idiot.

Graham wrote Hackers & Painters. I thought that you had read that book?

Yeah, Hani can put people off. He does serve a very good purpose however,
and that is call out when the Emperor is wearing no clothes. So many Java
blogs are boring and just go along to get along. Not Hani's. Despite his
presentation on his blog, he actually seems like an intelligent person. I
think his Graham bile was a mis-fire or else just tongue in cheek. I think
Hani's mad because Graham slammed Java in the past...TheServerSide had an
interesting interview with Hani not too long ago:

http://www.theserverside.com/talks/videos/HaniSuleiman/interview.tss?bandwidth=dsl

 
> Interesting presentation for a Java coder.

Even with the title, it seemed more generic to me. But maybe I've been
immersed in Java for too long. ;)
 
> > The only problem with new languages is that even if it was 10x the
> > productivity for the average developer, most PHB's would put the brakes on
> > using it since it's not .NET and it's not Java/J2EE. I say "new" even though
> > I know Ruby's been around for a few years - but I bet you that about 0.0001%
> > of managers have heard of Ruby. 
> 
> When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  That's
> how PHBes view things.

Yep, and not just PHBs. I know lots of programmers over the years who have
no interest in learning anything outside of their language(s). Those are the
ones that get promoted, maybe?
 
> How many languages have ever given 10x productivity, except for the jump
> from assembly to Fortran, Cobol, etc.?

None, but I'm saying even if there were, there would be a hurdle to get over
before it would be used. In Ruby's case, the first thing so many would be
asking is where they would get support for it. 
 
> When Matz created Ruby, he borrowed features from other languages, as
> any language developer would do.  He borrowed from Smalltalk, Lisp,
> Java, Python,  and Perl.  The language he created is not perfect, but it
> is clean.  I think it is an incremental improvement, not a big jump.
> Look at how accessors are done in Ruby, as opposed to C++ or Java.  An
> incremental improvement to reduce a bit of programming tedium.  Ruby's
> use of block/iterator is another one I like.
> 
> I like scripting languages.  Not because I could write a program more
> quickly (in some cases I didn't save any time because debugging took up
> most of the time anyway.)  but because I was programming in an
> environment where I did not have a budget for buying any software, and
> because it was easier to hand the program over for minor maintenance to
> occasional programmers with no programming training.  Portability was
> sometimes a factor, too, because I did not need to recompile on a
> different platform.  So I have used Rexx on OS/2, and awk, Tcl/Tk and
> Python on SCO Unix, and Python and Ruby on Windows.
> 
> Some things require more speed.  Or you need to prevent the customer
> from seeing and modifying the code.  In my case, I need to use C to
> write driver programs for coprocessor modules in PLC systems.  Sorry, C
> ++ won't fit.  And Visual Basic doesn't exist outside Windows.

Total agreement here. Use what makes sense. The more tools in your belt, the
better off you are. I agree with what Kevin Cullis was saying over on
clue-talk on regarding OS's. Use MS/Linux/OSX/etc when it makes sense - they
are just tools. The decision to use MS will most likely be driven by
business/political needs rather than technical ones, of course... ;)

Which comes back around to Graham. Did you see this?

http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html

I especially like this one:

 At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared
 to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon
 don't.

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at comcast.net  
District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape injury, 
and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any damage inflicted 
on the vehicle. 
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