[OT] We need a language

[James Michael DuPont]

--- Alaric B Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com> wrote:
> 
> >>>"True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to
> others, not
> >>>by how much you can coerce others to do what you want. "
> >>>Larry Wall "Perl, the first postmodern computer language"
> >>>http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html
> >>
> > 
> > This doesn't change the fact that perl sucks :P
> > 
> 
> I'd question any definition of greatness that funnily seems to focus
> on 
> the characteristics that the author is famed for!

The entire thing that makes perl great is that you can write baby perl,
simple online statements like in sed or grep that do things that are
useful. That is the macro system to the extreme.....

these programs can grow up into big programs over time. given the java
example, and macros, it is like saying that you select an default class
to derive from, a default method to implement and an default object to
call print on. These defaults would be great for writing even oneliner
in java.....
 
> 
> > I don't see why we can't have both. For example, on the static vs.
> dynamic
> > typing argument, we could have the implementation attempt to infer
> type, but
> > if it failed, output a warning and dynamically check types; an
> option to
> > enforce (even explicit!) static typing could be available.
> 
> At last! Somebody who agrees with me, seeking to unify both camps
> rather 
> than pitch into the fight! :-)

I also agree with you. I am aggreement in general with what is being
discussed on this thread. What makes me different is that I think that
we can migrate exisiting programs into this new framework, by modifing
them with an interface into tunes. 


> 
> I'm considering formalising and writing up an approach that's not
> based 
> around splitting the work into modules, as is the norm - but
> splitting 
> it into *interfaces*. The interfaces are what define a system; the 
> modules just implement the interfaces. If you design good interfaces,
> rather than just writing a layer of functions on top of something and
> then exposing those (which tends to produce an interface that carries
> assumptions about the structure of the implementation beneath - thus 
> constraining future evolution of that implementation), then you'll
> end 
> up with a much more flexible and better-modularised system.

Yes, this is what is missing almost completly in perl. the only
interface that I can think of is the TIE interface that allows you to
interface to hashes, array and scalars. and the DBD/DBI interface that
lets you talk to databases.

mike

=====
James Michael DuPont
http://introspector.sourceforge.net/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com