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The market will never be the best judge of what the most useful language is, but it is a correct judge. 'Best', being a relative term, takes an idividual's ide

by kruhft 13y ago

The market will never be the best judge of what the most useful language is, but it is a correct judge. 'Best', being a relative term, takes an idividual's ideals into account, 'correct' being what is actual in practice. The Best is chosen by the market that which is used to create the most successful product. By that measure, PHP is the best because Facebook is written in it. Best to the individual is much more complicated. The two will rarely coincide due to the uniqueness of the individual and the typical rejection of authority by intelligencia. I would never say that PHP is the 'best' language for doing high abstraction, but it can be done. I also would not use it for such things, but you said you have (if you are the author of the article). The 'Best' language is what you do your best work in, whether paid or not. Just don't expect to use it at work, and if you could, you would think something else would is best and pine for that. It's the job, not the tools.

mjburgess 13y ago
facebook is not written in PHP, it's written in a PHP-like language developed by them which is then transcompiled into C++ and then to binary. > It's the job, not the tools. Again, this is what i disagree with. There really is something objective, independent, and "true" to be said about the utility of various languages in various problem domains. There really is a language which represents the problem space most accurately, for example. It's just defeatism to suppose that "it's all the same, whatever works". Innovation is, of course, the opposite drive. It is at the innovative egdes of programming languages that these debates are had. If you arent part of this innovative edge then it may seem to you that the things youre using are just "market decisions", they are far from it. Every programming language you are using has not been created by the market, it has been shaped by the very debates i am talking about. The market cannot create languages, it does not improve them, the market merely plays out a baggage'd history which language-theorists have to cope with. This is why PHP has changed so much: it is the force of the people who engage in this discussion on the market, to drive it towards "better".
- kruhft 13y ago
  Facebook was originally written in PHP. It's true there are awesome specific language tools for your specific problems, that when tied together to create a total solution creates an unmaintainable mess that even the creator doesn't understand. Look at the web. I saw Kerrnigan talk about 'little languages' and I fully agree that a specific language designed to solve a problem is the way to go for small problems, like the ones when Unix was designed. Tying all these text based interfaces together is a maintenace nightmare. Maintenenace is a much bigger problem than the actual problems being solved, at least for businesses. Then there's Lisp, which is a mini-language designer's tool kit and the super glue to tie them together all in one integrated package using a well designed, common binding agent. Unfortunately the market has choosen not in it's favour. The market will improve languages and in end game is that they'll all have the same features, and then it comes down to syntax and performance. They'll all be 'better' by today's standards. The problem is at that point is that the better bar will have moved. And the guy that truly innovated during that time won't be found until the next century.

by kruhft 13y ago

mjburgess 13y ago

facebook is not written in PHP, it's written in a PHP-like language developed by them which is then transcompiled into C++ and then to binary. > It's the job, not the tools. Again, this is what i disagree with. There really is something objective, independent, and "true" to be said about the utility of various languages in various problem domains. There really is a language which represents the problem space most accurately, for example. It's just defeatism to suppose that "it's all the same, whatever works". Innovation is, of course, the opposite drive. It is at the innovative egdes of programming languages that these debates are had. If you arent part of this innovative edge then it may seem to you that the things youre using are just "market decisions", they are far from it. Every programming language you are using has not been created by the market, it has been shaped by the very debates i am talking about. The market cannot create languages, it does not improve them, the market merely plays out a baggage'd history which language-theorists have to cope with. This is why PHP has changed so much: it is the force of the people who engage in this discussion on the market, to drive it towards "better".

kruhft 13y ago
Facebook was originally written in PHP. It's true there are awesome specific language tools for your specific problems, that when tied together to create a total solution creates an unmaintainable mess that even the creator doesn't understand. Look at the web. I saw Kerrnigan talk about 'little languages' and I fully agree that a specific language designed to solve a problem is the way to go for small problems, like the ones when Unix was designed. Tying all these text based interfaces together is a maintenace nightmare. Maintenenace is a much bigger problem than the actual problems being solved, at least for businesses. Then there's Lisp, which is a mini-language designer's tool kit and the super glue to tie them together all in one integrated package using a well designed, common binding agent. Unfortunately the market has choosen not in it's favour. The market will improve languages and in end game is that they'll all have the same features, and then it comes down to syntax and performance. They'll all be 'better' by today's standards. The problem is at that point is that the better bar will have moved. And the guy that truly innovated during that time won't be found until the next century.