Re: The Lambda lambada...Why embedded SQL is becoming irrelevant and why you should start looking at functional programming.


"Richard" <riplin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1173897149.412650.127390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Mar 15, 1:56 am, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Richard" <rip...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

Compas Pascal, which became Turbo Pascal, and with Apple's objects
became Delphi.

Where are these today ?

Yes, a fair question...

Pascal certainly has credentials as a teaching language but it is hard to
assess the extent of the commercial user base.

Quick search on GOOGLE gave the following:

Delphi Pascal -> around 2,000,000 hits
COBOL -> around 10,000,000 hits
C# -> around 65,000,000 hits

(This could mean absolutely nothing, of course, but there are no hard
statistics I can find that are credible and unbiased regarding the user
base
for any of the above.)

I suspect the problem was not with the intrinsic quality of Pascal or
Delphi
as languages (I know from nodding acquaintance with both, that they are
at
least as good as other languages, and they support OO and Visual
programming), but rather from the fact that Borland was unable to really
market them.

The point I was making is that there is a 'fashion' in languages.

Yes, there certainly is. That fashion often arises out of a new approach in
programming methodology. The video discusses the arrival of OO and visual
programming as giving rise to new languages and enhancements to old ones.
The forward direction for OO is functional programming and this is also
discussed, particularly with regard to Lamda expressions. (I found this very
interesting as I had not encountered these ideas before...). Hejlsberg sees
C# as the ideal platform for this, but then, he would say that :-)


In
the 70s BASIC was where many systems were written. Not just Apple II
and BBC but DEC systems were written in BASIC.

Yes, I remember writing BASIC on a PDP 8... :-)


In the 80s it was Pascal, and especially Turbo Pascal, but many other
varieties. Then Visual Basic, then C++, then Java, now C#. Next year
it may be something else.

Apparently, functional programming. It certainly seems like a logical
extrapolation of the OO concepts.


Allusion is made to both of these at the start of the interview. As
Hejlsberg was behind these, and C#, it seems he has done much better
since
moving to MicroSoft... :-)

Microsoft wanted a hammer to beat Java with so they 'bought' Anders
from Borland.

I don't see Java going away any time soon... :-)


From my own involvement in C# I know that MS are pushing it quite hard
and
making it very easy for people to acquire, learn and use it. They are
targeting amateur programmers and kids who are interested, as well as
professionals.

It was particularly interesting to me to see in this interview that C# is
NOT perceived internally (at least not by the two people in the
interview)
as the wonder language du jour you could be forgiven for thinking it is
from
MS marketing. Hejlsberg sees it as a good framework for functional
programming and implementing Lamba expressions and expression trees,
rather
than as a finished product.

One of the alleged reasons that Vista took so long was that the
released Vista is a quick rewrite based on 2003 kernal with some UI
'enhancements' and a bunch of bling copied from Apple OSX. This was
necessary when it became obvious that they would never get the product
they had been working on since before XP would ever work. This was
Cairo, a rewrite of Windows to run on top of the .NET3 CLI. Allegedly
written in C# it was supposed to be able to be ported to various
processors including the Cell of XBox 360 so it could be used to make
a Microsoft XPC.

Interesting, and certainly may have elements of truth. It is, nonetheless,
hearsay.

A search of the web reveals that the Cairo project was dropped in 1996, long
before C# or .NET3 were ever thought of

C# is designed to be portable. This is achieved by Interop services, the
same facility that allows me to run my existing COBOL code from within a C#
wrapper.


I think that MS's confidence in C# may have suffered as they are now
talking about 'the next Windows' as being continuation of Vista.

Sorry, I don't follow that... How does Vista affect C#? (C# code runs
managed under Vista just as it does with anything else.) Certainly there is
no sign of a confidence dip that I can detect form MS forums. On the
contrary, they have just opened (within the last couple of weeks, I
think...) a new facility designed to attract new programmers to both VB and
C#.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner/

I would expect the "next Windows" to be a continuation of Vista. In fact I
believe all future Windows systems will be incarnations of Vista, until such
time as a total rewrite is carried out (if ever...).

Pete.


.

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