Re: Interesting article by Joel Spolsky: The Perils of JavaSchools


Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <qokqr1los71vcv7oemue9ll77cpom5169u@xxxxxxx>,
> caseyhHAMMER_TIME@xxxxxxxx says...
> > Interesting article by Joel Spolsky: The Perils of JavaSchools
> >
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
>
> Decades ago, Dijkstra sneered at students who had dared to learn Basic,
> and consequently lapped up his pearls of wisdom with less appreciation
> than he expected. Now, it appears, the target is Java.
>
> It's ironic to see the somewhat trivial concepts of pointers and
> recursion feted as challenging, purely on the basis that certain
> programmers are unfamiliar with their use. [And surely Java supports
> recursion as well as any language?]
>

Misses the point.

Most Java(any imperative language) programmers will instinctively opt
for an iterative solution and will only use recursion when they are
forced to.

Iterative solutions don't scale well to increasingly complex data
structures. In those situations your imperative programmer takes a lot
longer to produce buggier, less concise solutions, because they are not
practised in recursive techniques.

> Then comes the extolling of functional languages such as Lisp, which
> have more advocates than useful programs written in them. It expands
> the brain and makes you a better person, or so we're told. I've heard
> colonic irrigation does the same.
>

Misses the point again.
The ability to think recursively is an important skill for a programmer
and indeed problem solvers at large.

Functional languages force you to acquire that skill because thats the
only way of getting things done.

Once you have that skill it transfers to understanding algorithms, and
to programming competently in languages that do have "useful programs
written in them" like XSLT which alot of imperative programmers make a
complete mess off..

.

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