On Dec 6, 2007 9:34 PM, Waldemar Kornewald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Your statement sounds like an assembler developer claiming that with
> C++'s productivity most programmers will become unnecessary.

And most assembler programmers did, no?  When an advancement comes
along you adapt or move on somewhere else.

> Mainstream developers are neither stupid nor are they unnecessary.

I don't think they are fundamentally stupid, but the majority of
people who calls themselves programmers don't really care about this
craft at all.  They just write what ever monstrosity manages to
accidentally work, and don't seem to be interested in ever improving
their skill set.  It's not really their fault, in most organizations
the way forward is to serve your time in such a position and then move
to management.  There isn't much motivation to care.  The problem is,
decades of this has built some pretty substantial balls of mud.  It's
also ingrained some pretty silly ideas about "success" in people's
minds.

> Does that language suddenly make you more creative by a factor of 10?
> No, probably not. Who will get great ideas for new concepts, then?

I don't think a factor of 10 is so hard to hit when going from a
restrictive language (e.g. Java, C++) to a flexible one.

> Don't you think
> this language will be used to build new systems that are far more
> complex than today?

I certainly hope so.

>Then, we probably won't need less developers
> (actually, there will probably also be a lot more competing software
> companies and products if software development becomes much cheaper).
>
> Moreover, isn't one goal of this project to bring programming to the
> masses, so more people will be able to make computers help them with
> their work?

For some definition of "masses".  People who are incapable or
unwilling to learn new, simpler (!) and more effective syntax are
dinosaurs that will be left behind, one way or another.  If the future
is going to *advance* then it will have to be different then what we
have now.  If someone is not willing to learn something different then
they wont be a part of it.

> How can this ever be achieved if the syntax is ugly and
> the language is difficult to use? Well, someone will create a popular
> COLA, anyway.

What language is ugly and difficult to use?  The ones you seem to
dislike so much are Lisp and Smalltalk.  Smalltalk IMO is one of the
most beautiful languages ever.  And Lisp is certainly no uglyer then C
and it's derivatives.

But the fact is, these (from both me and you) are simply opinions.
When you say "ugly and difficult to use" there is an implicit "for me"
in there.  And so there is your answer, the future will be achieved by
people who are capable of learning better languages then we have now.
There are very few places where people incapable of advancing can stay
relevant.

> The message syntax isn't bad, but the people I talked to told me that
> they absolutely didn't like all those cryptic ^$#:.| chars, among
> other things.

Huh?  99% of Smalltalk are English words.  Those symbols are are only
need for making literal objects and doing a special return from a
method.  What language were they using that had no non-alphabetic
characters?

> Anyway, if the language will be inspired by eToys and also (but not
> only? :) intended for children then I'm pretty sure its syntax will be
> more than acceptable, so it's pointless to start a flamewar.

Yes it was, so please do choose your words a bit more careful in future.

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