Jan, Answering your points in a slightly different order:
>I agree on this, or at least this is my experience on how it *used* to be. >But I have the impression that attitude that this has changed, or it could be >that my environment has changed. I'm working as a teacher at a Computer >Science department and the background/attitude of our students has changed a >lot the last 10 years. Computing is still a young field and major attitudes are still heavily influenced by fashion. In fact I will stick my neck out and claim that fashion is a more significant factor than any technical issue. >The second thing was: > > Some people enjoy writing cryptic code, while others enjoy writing > self-evident code. As I have said before. Any credible theory of programming has to include fun as one of the major drivers of programmer behavior. > Neat languages actually prevent programmers from doing things that > might be 'dangerous' - which is why Pascal makes it har to get at You can never prevent programmers doing what is dangerous, you can only make it difficult to do what is dangerous. Then of course there are the compiler vendors who are always willing to respond to customer demand by adding the extensions that the designer of the language did not include because they were dangerous. derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
