[jdev] Re: Windows stack

[Kevin Smith]

On 20 Feb 2007, at 07:18, Clive Holloway wrote:
> Perl's 'problem' is that as well as being able to write clean, well  
> thought out code, it's just as easy to write a mess. Java, for  
> example, forces a lot more rules on you, and it has real OO, so  
> mistakes that can easily be made in Perl just can't be made in Java.

This is actually the reason I advocate using Java for things, C# (and  
even C++ to some extent) over Perl, Python, Ruby etc. The latter set  
of 'expressive' languages require every person who touches (and often  
reads) the code to be a great programmer, or all hell breaks loose.  
This is simply not true with Java. So while I, along with every other  
programmer out there, believe that I am personally a great programmer  
and can use all the powerful features of any language that is thrown  
at me (this is rhetoric), I realise that everyone else sucks in  
comparison (this is a standard belief among programmers, I don't  
really subscribe to it - anymore). As such, I really think it's worth  
coding in a constraining language wherever less than brilliant  
programmers are involved (or anyone who has a bad day), because the  
original setup time of not being able to use the full expressiveness  
is made up later in (particularly large) projects, in terms of being  
able to read and understand the restricted code. If you know you'll  
always have a brilliant team, or it's a smallish project, or etc etc  
etc, it can be appropriate to use the expressive languages, but I  
think of these as sharp knifes, and programmers as people - you don't  
give the sharpest knifes to kids, or they'll hurt themselves (or you)  
- give them plastic knifes and they'll take a little longer to cut  
their food, but at least you won't spend the night in A&E.

Now, I've been quite careful (and I hope I've succeeded) in  
explaining one reason for not picking expressive languages without  
offense to the people who do. I'd ask others participating in the  
conversation to please try and temper their replies too - we probably  
have someone subscribed to this list for just about every language  
going and we certainly have C/C++ coders here, so please don't attack  
their lifestyles too directly, they're people too (mostly) :)

/K
-- 
Kevin Smith
Psi XMPP client project leader - http://psi-im.org