On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:40 AM, BGB <[email protected]> wrote: > I think "fitness" and "merit" are some often misunderstood ideas. >
People understand just fine that a solution of technical merit can fail due to market forces, positioning, and fear of change. But they don't need to like it. > the solutions which do best often tend to have the best sets of tradeoffs > and/or being well suited to a various niche, albeit typically not being > ideal in any single area. > Be careful! Correlation isn't causation. It is true that solutions that succeed tend to have 'good' tradeoffs and/or are well suited to a niche. *But so are a lot of solutions that fail.* Indeed, the failures often have even better tradeoffs, because they are built with hindsight. Inertia and circumstance easily trample a 'better' solution, especially for a technology such as a programming language that grows a whole ecosystem around it (IDEs, optimizers, integration with applications, et cetera). *Whether you intend it or not*, saying that the popular solution is the 'best' one without even researching what has been attempted seems ignorant, insulting, and prejudicial. Chances are, even if BGBScript is an improvement on JavaScript in every way you or I can imagine, it will fail. How would you feel if someone, who has never even looked up your language, were to say: "JavaScript succeeds because it makes the best tradeoffs."
_______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
