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Alan Kay seems to think along similar (though not identical) lines these days. The sheer inertia of ordinary programming language implementations means that by
by gngeal 13y ago
Alan Kay seems to think along similar (though not identical) lines these days. The sheer inertia of ordinary programming language implementations means that by the time you get to use it, you may realize that something "slightly different" would have been better, but you seldom have any other option than to "suck it up".
- jacques_chester 13y agoEconomists have a term for it -- Path Dependence. Some decisions have a high enough reversal cost that they are in practice irreversible. This means that one's future decisions are dependent on historical decisions over which one might have had no control. In our case: once a technology is deeply rooted, it's hard to displace. More closely, the Rogers model of diffusion[2] has 5 factors of diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity/simplicity, trialability and observability). Generally even the most advantageous language transitions score well only in relative advantage. The other diffusion predictors are missing or weak. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations