On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 15:31:02 UTC, Ola Fosheim
Grøstad wrote:
People are not looking for a general purpose language. They are
looking for a solution to their particular problem area...
Go
Rust
Swift
All fairly specialized and gaining ground.
I wouldn't call Swift specialized, maybe only because it only
runs on OS X, iOS and linux right now. So Linus would predict
that Go and Rust may do well now because they're specialized, but
will be hit hard if their niche collapses and they don't become
more general-purpose before then (which I don't think they can
do). You seem to think that's not a real concern, that the
growth from specialization is worth it. Let's see who's right. :)
On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 15:34:47 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:
On 02/11/2016 06:53 AM, Dejan Lekic wrote:
I know some will disagree with me, but I will say it anyway: IT
community, especially developers, are known for poor social
skills...
People tend to forget that...
There may be a certain *small* level of truth to that, but most
of it is nothing more than decades of Hollywood's pejorative
stereotyping. And people being naive enough to believe what
they see in the fiction that was produced by people who have
spent decades proving themselves to have zero comprehension of
basic reality, let alone even a basic high-school level
research ability.
That's how Hollywood works: they take a well-known trait or
stereotype and build a caricature out of it, ie jocks are
good-looking and dumb, the President is wise and composed, and so
on.
It's the standard old Hollywood complete and total disconnect
with reality - hell, look how they portray Tourette's a having
a relationship to swearing (which is just plain bizarre to
anyone actually capable of spending a mere one minute on a
basic web search), or how cracking security always involves
playing a 3D puzzle game. And then there's the oddity that any
time a writer or director uses a computer in real life, the
machine is clearly built to detect it's being used by Hollywood
personnel, so all login systems automatically switch from the
normal "Username and Password don't match \ Incorrect login \
Password was incorrect" to a flashing red "ACCESS DENIED".
Because presumably they actually see this flashing red "ACCESS
DENIED" when they actually do use a computer in real life,
because they couldn't really be THAT dumb when producing a
film, right? At least that's the only explanation I can come up
with for its appearance in otherwise "realistic" movies, at
least aside from LSD...which really could explain all the rest
of their delusions too...hmm...
A lot of that is about showing simply and visually, or with
greater effect, what would be boring if shown realistically.
Many watching will not be able to read "Incorrect login," but
they can figure out that flashing red is bad. If that person
with Tourette's were just twitching uncontrollably, it's not very
entertaining, whereas it's funny if they unexpectedly swear like
a sailor in front of some prude. :) Watching somebody cracking
security or defusing a bomb realistically would be boring and
confusing, if not for the 3D puzzles or flashing LED bomb clocks
to watch and understand what's going on.
They're not that stupid, you know. They're just trying to make
as much money as they can, which means dumbing the material down
for the lowest common denominator.
In fact, I find it astonishing how often they raise issues that
later become big in real life.
Hollywood mental flakes spend decades inventing and reinforcing
their own myopic stereotypes, such as "technical ability ==
dorks with no social skills", most likely because they feel
threatened by people with at least half a function brain (which
most of them clearly lack), and then the masses believe it, and
it becomes *cough* "fact". That's all there is to it.
There may be some truth to that, but more likely they're just
pandering to the stereotypes of their audience, ie the salesman
who snickers at the IT guy who can't get a date but is jealous
that he makes more money.
I did think the recent movies The Social Network and Jobs, both
written by the writer of The West Wing and The Newsroom, showed a
concerted effort to cast those tech CEOs in a negative light.
Hollywood is likely mad that tech is encroaching on their domain,
with youtube, iTunes, Netflix, etc. There were supposedly
characters in The Newsroom who railed against bloggers (never
watched the show, heard it was bad), and the writer has done the
same in real life.
What you say may be true in the last couple years, whereas before
they likely didn't see tech as a threat.
