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Interesting. Although for Ruby (the case he cites) I would argue his "awesome" reason, community, actually springs partially from one of his wrong reasons, nam
by prosa 17y ago
Interesting.
Although for Ruby (the case he cites) I would argue his "awesome" reason, community, actually springs partially from one of his wrong reasons, namely "readability, expressiveness and an awesome standard library".
- billybob 17y agoMaybe so. I'd love to see a thoughtful article on what creates a great language or framework community. How clean and consistent the language is? Official documentation? Ease of transitioning from other languages? Charisma and marketing savvy from creators? The ability for programmers to use it for fun side projects? I imagine that one reason that Microsoft-invented languages don't have the culture of Ruby is that you often need expensive licenses to use them, which you won't do unless you're making something Enterprisey (boring). Whereas Ruby and Python are "download and hack away." Maybe that also creates more goodwill from coders.
- UpFromTheGut 17y agoMicrosoft would be foolish to not give away free developer tools. You don't need to purchase anything to use .NET; you can download an ide that comes with a C#, VB.NET, C++/CLI compilers off the bat: http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/ http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/ And besides that, you can get compilers for F#, J#, IronPython, IronRuby, etc.