I understand what you are saying, but I also think you are playing semantic games here. By "truth", I was referring simply to objectively testable results (the scientific method), not opening up a philosophical discussion on the nature of truth. But in any case, there are certainly no objectively testable results possible in terms of what language is best. I think we can agree on that. Therefore this argument from Kuhn doesn't really apply very directly. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the whole discipline of computer software engineering is a gray area, with some of it (actually very little) being scientific and the majority of it being a difficult-to-teach art. So at best, I think all Kuhn is saying that's relevant to this discussion is that people are slow to change. He's hardly the first to note that. What's more, in non-scientific areas like programming they may actually have more reasons than entrenchment to avoid a particular change (which can't be objectively proved no matter what the method). Certainly this is true for me, as I am aware of the benefits of Scala and actually WANT a replacement for Java, but I still don't want to choose Scala for the reasons I outlined and not simply because I don't want to change my way of doing things. If I was that type of person, would I have created Wicket? Something that people told me for years would never be useful because it bucked the common wisdom that you can't have server side state? Could it be that there are some reasons besides entrenchment that people are not flooding to Scala?
But regardless of what we both think about Kuhn, your argument is funny to me because it's an attempt to apply logical reasoning to what purely artistic choice. Would Kuhn say that his book applies to the choices of materials by visual artists? I tend to think not, because there would be no way to test his theory. And anyway, if you're going to go in this direction, why isn't it also clear that Eiffel, Haskell and Clojure are The Way forward, as you are suggesting Scala must be? After all, if this is a discussion about "science" and politics, surely this is objective as well? Don't you think the choice of languages in software engineering depends not so much on would-be-objective assessment of technical excellence, but rather on subjective experience, artistic temperament and perceived applicability to the problem at hand? For myself, I love a lot of Scala's features and said as much when I first ran into it, but after some reflection it simply does not fit my minimalist artistic aesthetic and it has a lot of dangerous moving parts that I don't want in the hands of co-workers. You can think what you like, but this reasoning has nothing to do with any "entrenched political interests" I might have. -- View this message in context: http://apache-wicket.1842946.n4.nabble.com/Scala-Wicket-Help-and-Advice-tp3174601p3207861.html Sent from the Forum for Wicket Core developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
