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I know everyone's read it 100 times already, but: Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were consciously designing a pro

by jgg 16y ago

I know everyone's read it 100 times already, but: Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them. Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp. From here: http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html

kenjackson 16y ago
Fun quote, but factually incorrect. For example, who was the first user of C++? Bjarne himself. He needed the power of Simula, but at the time Simula implementations didn't scale. He took the ideas he found useful in the language and put some into C, as he was building large scale C/BCPL applications. To me that's the definition of building a language for yourself. You actually write a language that you need to solve a specific problem you have. And I find his categorization of good vs bad languages somewhat absurd. What actually makes Ada, C++, and Pascal bad? His lack of understanding? What makes C, Perl, and Lisp good? The inverse? While I have my own personal prefernces with respect to languages, I fully believe a large part of it is familiarity. I've NEVER met anyone who could argue why a particular language was truly bad. They usually are just passionately arguing religion, and I find that tiring. It was cute when I was in high school, but those debates are getting tired.
- jgg 16y ago
  I just brought out the quote because I thought it was relevant. I never said I agreed with it 100%.
- jemfinch 16y ago
  Also, according to Kay's "The Early History of Smalltalk" [1], Smalltalk was very much designed with end users in mind. [1] http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html
zb 16y ago
And not only programming languages: http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Yours_Mine_Ours.html http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Yours_Mine_Ours.html

by jgg 16y ago

kenjackson 16y ago

Fun quote, but factually incorrect. For example, who was the first user of C++? Bjarne himself. He needed the power of Simula, but at the time Simula implementations didn't scale. He took the ideas he found useful in the language and put some into C, as he was building large scale C/BCPL applications. To me that's the definition of building a language for yourself. You actually write a language that you need to solve a specific problem you have. And I find his categorization of good vs bad languages somewhat absurd. What actually makes Ada, C++, and Pascal bad? His lack of understanding? What makes C, Perl, and Lisp good? The inverse? While I have my own personal prefernces with respect to languages, I fully believe a large part of it is familiarity. I've NEVER met anyone who could argue why a particular language was truly bad. They usually are just passionately arguing religion, and I find that tiring. It was cute when I was in high school, but those debates are getting tired.

jgg 16y ago
I just brought out the quote because I thought it was relevant. I never said I agreed with it 100%.
jemfinch 16y ago
Also, according to Kay's "The Early History of Smalltalk" [1], Smalltalk was very much designed with end users in mind. [1] http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html

zb 16y ago

And not only programming languages: http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Yours_Mine_Ours.html http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Yours_Mine_Ours.html