> less power. It's always like that. The language of a human (and maths)
> is just so much more advanced than any computer language, it depresses
> me at times. (Assembly language is so primitive that we all stopped
> talking it by now, except when we absolutely must do it. But it sure is
> "flexible", like an atom - you can use tons of them to build a copy of
> the earth, given you have a few billion years time and way too much
> patience for your own good :))
>
This is a nice argument but it's highly subjective, I find OP to be the
computer language CLOSEST to human language, python and java both inherrited
too much ascii art from C++ and don't get me STARTED on perl !
One of the things I love about OP (a compiled language) is that it uses mostly
WORDS to say things, not symbols, true it's slightly more typing - but it is
so much more readable.
I always tell my trainee's "If I NEED comments to read your code - it is badly
written". Of course I also make it absolutely clear that any program of more
than 100 lines which doesn't have comments is pretty much guaranteed to
ensure they won't get a permanent position with me, but comments should be
there to add clarity NOT to tell you what the code DOES ! That should be
obvious just from reading the code.
This isn't possible in most languages, in OP it's the default - that is why I
think it's such a brilliantly designed language, and the fact is this is
something Pascal has boasted since Wirth invented the first version of it.
Pascal is probably the only language you can read (large sections of) aloud
without stuttering. In other words, by your argument those languages have all
failed at exactly the supposed REASON they are interpreted/bytecompiled in
the first place.
Like I said, it's way too subjective an argument. Now don't get me wrong, I
actually rather like python, it has a nice design (although the whole
whitespace has meaning thing annoys me a bit) and a fairly decent syntax but
the simple reality is that I write code which will end up running on thin
clients - that means if a computer slows down to any noticeable degree when
running 50 copies of the program at once -it's not good enough, and that
rules out python for anything complex.
Lazarus works beautifully, I have the language that I like for most work, I
can quickly design my GUI's in a RAD environment and the programs run FAST.
In the end, Java has spent ten years telling programmers that computers are
now so fast that customers don't care about speed anymore, and in ten years
computers still haven't gotten that fast and frankly they never will because
as computers get faster customers will always expect software to get faster
at the same rate (and customers being customers they will expect it to be
just as fast on a PII). In the real world, a program that runs slowly and
uses up a lot of resources annoys customers and they find another program.
Throw in the realities of Africa, and you end up utilising things like thin
clients so that those PII's or sometimes even 486's can run modern day apps.
Of course they are never quite as fast as on a P4 but they look as fast to
users which is good enough -at least for compiled programs which do not abuse
all the available resources in the system but use only what they need leaving
the rest for the other users.
In the end, the choice of a language is personal and not the least of your
concerns should be "what language does most of the people on this project
know the best", but discounting OP because of what it wasn't in the 80's
is ... well uninformed silliness.
A.J.
--
"there's nothing as inspirational for a hacker as a cat obscuring a bug
by sitting in front of the monitor" - Boudewijn Rempt
A.J. Venter
Chief Software Architect
OpenLab International
www.getopenlab.com
www.silentcoder.co.za
+27 82 726 5103
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