Hi Alan,
I am calling you as a witness for the defense of my case.
You said:
> I also thought about my own reluctance
> to use J in my professional environment (financial).
>
> One of the main reasons for our not using J in my company is that the
> adoption and usage rate is so low,
Aren't you supporting my argument? The reason a system spreads is that
it has champions who fight for it. Where are the champions of J who are
fighting for it. If you won't, surely you are telling me that you don't
believe in it.
You said:
> How can I commit company resources to a development environment that
> requires specialists to do development, or, alternatively, requires my
> existing Java, ObjC, Python, and Ruby developers to spend considerable
> amount of time learning J just to become productive?
Wouldn't it be beneficial to have a development requirement that could
be used by those who weren't specialists?
You said:
> And, once
> having become productive in J, are now even more critical than they
> used to be, which is not a healthy thing for any company.
If there is nothing wrong with J, why are experienced users more
critical than new users?
You said:
> The problem of J's low level of adoption and usage is like the problem
> of esperanto. It is a perfectly logical, artificial language, but one
> which almost no one uses. The reason no one uses esperanto, is
> because it is not integrated into any culture, as are all native
> languages.
Alternatively, by choosing a popular (e.g., Ruby) development
> environment, with its very high levels of adoption and usage, it's
> large library of packages ("gems"), and correspondingly large
> development pool, I can find more Ruby developers quickly, at lower
> cost than I could for J.
Into what culture was Ruby integrated (say) 20 years ago when J
was already available?
You said:
> Get people using J's easy calculator-like features, and gradually,
> more and more people will begin discovering its other features.
Isn't that what I am saying? But I am also saying that:
1) Replacing the ugliness of explicit J would draw them in further.
2) A more integrated J would make the move to tacit J a much
easier task.
> And, if there's a J platform on lots of computers and PDAs, then
> developers will build more J packages to solve problems so that users
> do not even need to know that much about the J language itself, just
> use it as a platform.
> This is how you create demand, and lower the barriers to adoption and
> usage.
I totally agree.
Don
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
