Choosing a new language

[Rico Secada]

Brad> Best of luck in finding skilled, affordable Ada programmers
Brad> outside of major cities.

Which is why it may be a good idea to learn it and earn a lot of $$
$

I have yet to see a job offering in which Ada is wanted, atleast in my
country there is none.

 

[Joachim Durchholz]

Haveyou looked at selenium?

Yes. I couldn't get it to work.
I think it's more regression testing than debugging though. If that's
correct, it's less pertinent to this subthread (which is already well
off-topic already).

Regards,
Jo

 

[George Neuner]

Ada is airline/dod blessed.

Airline blessed maybe. The DOD revoked its Ada only edict because
they couldn't find enough Ada programmers. AFAIK, Ada is still the
preferred language, but it is not required.

George

 

[Tim Roberts]

Let me tell you, since you know PHP, that PHP and Perl are practically
identical in their high-levelness or expressiveness or field of
application (and syntax), and, Perl and Python are pretty much the
same except their syntax.

I agree with the fundamental sentiment here, but it's important to note
that the syntax difference between Perl and Python is an enormous
consideration.

The biggest problem with Perl's syntax, in my view, is that it is darned
near impossible to write Perl code that can be read and understood later,
by anyone, including the author. I've used both languages extensively, and
even with all of that experience, it takes considerable effort for me to go
back to the Perl scripts I wrote 4 or 5 years ago and grasp what they
actually do.

With Python, on the other hand, much of the source code reads like English
prose. It's certainly possible to code "write-only" sequences by abusing
comprehensions and generators, but obfuscations like that are the exception
rather than the rule.

 

[Achim Schneider]

I agree with the fundamental sentiment here, but it's important to
note that the syntax difference between Perl and Python is an enormous
consideration.

The biggest problem with Perl's syntax, in my view, is that it is
darned near impossible to write Perl code that can be read and
understood later, by anyone, including the author. I've used both
languages extensively, and even with all of that experience, it takes
considerable effort for me to go back to the Perl scripts I wrote 4
or 5 years ago and grasp what they actually do.

With Python, on the other hand, much of the source code reads like
English prose. It's certainly possible to code "write-only"
sequences by abusing comprehensions and generators, but obfuscations
like that are the exception rather than the rule.

Should I start a flame war? Shouldn't I?

It's New Year's Eve, after all, fits quite nicely.

Perl excels on executing braindumps. Python is quite good in that area,
too.

Haskell, too, but only if you think Haskell. And Haskell has style.
Good style. Very good style, to be exact.

In the end that means that you can't read your Perl and Python programs
'cos your brain was a bit muddy at the time you wrote it.

Well, with Haskell this would never happen, as you wouldn't have ever
been able to write such atrocious code in the first place.

You would rather think about the problem in detail, get disabused by
old aunty typecheck, abstract, and write completely unintelligent code
_after_ understanding that your brainmuddiness was actually complete
clarity, it was the language you were trying to implement it in that
made it muddy.

And now please all stop posting and let me get completely drunk in
relative peace.

 

[Joachim Durchholz]

[...] PHP and Perl are practically identical in their
high-levelness or expressiveness or field of application (and
syntax),

That must have been a very, very distant point of view with narrowly
squinted eyes.

Regards,
Jo

 

[kevin cline]

Airline blessed maybe. The DOD revoked its Ada only edict because
they couldn't find enough Ada programmers. AFAIK, Ada is still the
preferred language, but it is not required.

As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'. Any decent
programmer
should be productive in Ada long before their security clearance is
approved.
The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to
the best and brightest.

 

[Tim Roberts]

As if there were such a thing as an 'Ada programmer'. Any decent
programmer should be productive in Ada long before their security
clearance is approved.

That's only true because the security clearance process has become so
complicated. Ada is not a trivial language by any means. Even an
experienced C programmer is going to find enough sharp edges to send him
back to the reference manuals on a regular basis.

The real problem the DoD has is that defense work is not attractive to
the best and brightest.

Bull crap. You don't HEAR about them because of that same security
clearance issue, but some of the most complicated and certainly some of the
LARGEST computing systems in the world come out of the DoD. You don't
create reliable large systems using a corral full of bright-eyed college
new hires.

 

[Tim Roberts]

[...] PHP and Perl are practically identical in their
high-levelness or expressiveness or field of application (and
syntax),

That must have been a very, very distant point of view with narrowly
squinted eyes.

Do you really think so? It seems clear to me that the syntax of PHP was
heavily influenced by Perl. PHP lacks the @array and %hash weirdnesses,
but most PHP code will work just fine as Perl.

 

[Joachim Durchholz]

[...] PHP and Perl are practically identical in their
high-levelness or expressiveness or field of application (and
syntax),

That must have been a very, very distant point of view with narrowly
squinted eyes.

Do you really think so? It seems clear to me that the syntax of PHP was
heavily influenced by Perl. PHP lacks the @array and %hash weirdnesses,
but most PHP code will work just fine as Perl.

Quite unlikely.
It won't even parse. PHP code starts with <?php, which is AFAIK not
valid Perl. (Anything before <?php will be copied out to stdout, which,
again, isn't Perl semantics. Anything between ?> and the next <?php will
be copied through, too.)

I'm not sure whether a PHP function definition would parse in Perl or
not. It's possible that it may - but then, I don't think it will run
unless you use a humongous compatibility library.

Taking another step back, Perl has namespaces and can access shared
libraries directly. PHP has no namespaces, and you need to recompile it
to access yet another shared lib.
Libraries are very, very different. The thing that I last stumbled over
is that both have an extremely different approach to FastCGI: PHP
strives to isolate the programmer from it, Perl gives the direct
approach. (This is a philosophical difference. PHP library functions
tend to cover up for platform differences, Perl gives you the
definitions needed to detect and handle differences.)

If you take another step back, yes both languages are procedural,
interpreted languages and use $ in front of every variable.

Regards,
Jo

 

[kevin cline]

That's only true because the security clearance process has become so
complicated. Ada is not a trivial language by any means. Even an
experienced C programmer is going to find enough sharp edges to send him
back to the reference manuals on a regular basis.


Bull crap. You don't HEAR about them because of that same security
clearance issue, but some of the most complicated and certainly some of the
LARGEST computing systems in the world come out of the DoD. You don't
create reliable large systems using a corral full of bright-eyed college
new hires.

I didn't say anything about what the DoD built, or attempted to
build. I meant that
the most talented young programmers find companies like Google and
Amazon or other
startups more attractive than defense work. I worked at a Defense
software startup
in Dallas for ten years. I know how it worked. Organizations like
Texas Instruments D-Seg hired a lot of new graduates, mostly from
second-tier midwestern
public schools, and put them to work writing defense systems.

With cost-plus contracting, companies bill the DoD by the hour, making
a fixed fee for
each hour charged. As long as a programmer has the necessary
credentials, their productivity
makes no difference to the company's income. Once the contract has
been won, labor saving
suggestions have no value. I know of at least one case where a very
talented programmer
realized that several man-years of manual effort could easily be
automated, but his suggestion was
rejected because it would have left a dozen cut-and-paste programmers
with no work.

With that sort of grind-it-out project management, talented people who
came
to Dallas to work for TI or E-Systems didn't tend to stay in defense
very long.
Many were cherry-picked by the growing telecomm industry, where a
talented developer
could make a huge difference to the bottom line.