Re: GoTo in Java


In article <1138044236.131727.197540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Richard" <riplin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Michael Wojcik wrote:
>
> > > The popular languages are not so because of their syntax (eg see Perl),
> > > but because of the rich libraries and components that are available to
> > > implement the task with the minimum of source code.
>
> > That may well be one factor that contributes to some languages'
> > popularity, but C, for example, has been extremely successful despite
> > the fact that the standard library is very small and primitive. ...
>
> > ... It does mean, though, that
> > with a C implementation you get easy access to a huge array of software,
> > particularly tools, and that tends to draw people into C.
>
> So you do agree with me ;-)

Well, not exactly.

> There were many languages avilable that had adherents, but with C you
> could select from hundreds of diskettes of open source software to
> provide most of a solution.

There was (and is) a lot of C source available, true (see my response
to Howard on this topic). But I was actually referring to the fact
that with a C implementation you could build a lot of software that
was useful in itself, not as resources for your own C project.

In theory, there have long been many free libraries and code snippets
you could use to extend the standard C language in a more or less
portable fashion. In practice, though, for every C project I've seen
that uses, say, Berkeley DB to store data, I've seen ten that rely
directly on C's file I/O to implement their own (often not very well-
designed) database.

The history of C is a history of reinvention. Look at all the C APIs
available for providing GUIs under X11 (a key area for many applica-
tions which is not covered by the standard language), for example:
Xlib, Xtk, Xaw, Motif... And yet despite all of those, with their
often-overlapping functionality, we have many, many X11 C programs
that implement their own widget libraries. xrn, the newsreader I'm
using here, is one.

Contrast that with languages that have large standard or semi-standard
libraries, like Java or C++ (particularly since the 98 standard put
the STL in the standard library). libavl is readily available for
most C projects, but I see C programmers time and again implementing
their own tree structures. The competent contemporary C++ programmer,
on the other hand, will use a standard container for the vast majority
of applications.

There's a lot available for C, outside the standard language, but in
practice it does not see nearly as much use as similar facilities do
for other languages.

> > More importantly, OCaml is very safe; it's a strictly-typed functional
> > language with built-in memory management that's amenable to proofs of
> > correctness and secure programming techniques. Yet almost no one
> > uses it in commercial development.
>
> No, they seem to prefer loosely typed dynamic OO scripting languages
> such as Perl (yuk), PHP and Python (yay!).

That doesn't explain the popularity of, say, C++.

> > I could speculate why, but I think
> > really it comes down to a host of irrational factors: comfort level
> > and familiarity for developers and management; a reluctance to move
> > away from the languages used for existing code bases, even when those
> > are fraught with bugs; and chance - some languages catch the eyes of
> > tastemakers and others do not.
>
> And some have code or libraries available that do almost exactly what
> is required with minimum effort.

Some do, for some tasks. But again I've seen countless lines of C++
struggling to perform what could be done with far less effort - and
far fewer bugs - in OCaml. I don't believe richness of already-
available functionality is really very prominent in commercial
language selection. It plays a role, but I'm not convinced it's a
major one in the industry as a whole.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

But I still wouldn't count out the monkey - modern novelists being as
unpredictable as they are at times. -- Marilyn J. Miller
.

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