The referenced article makes some interesting observations about the library question. All of the script programmers used the hash tables built into the language. Java and C++ have similar functionality in their libraries, but none of the Java or C++ programmers used them. It doesn't look like a gray area to me.
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Raney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: General MetaCard question
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 10:21:58 -0600 (MDT)
This is a good point, and one I've never seen quantified very well:
when is it appropriate to consider libraries when calculating the
productivity of a language? And if you decide to do this, how do you
take into account the difficulty in finding and learning how to use a
non-bundled library? For example, you can spend days looking for and
comparing multimedia libraries for Visual Basic: is this a case of
improving productivity or just wasting time?
> In any case, I'm curious if you've thought about this, and if so, what
> you think a defensible number is. (Has anyone done this kind of research
> on Java? Perl? Python?
I consider Java to be C in disguise, and the only good study I've seen
on the subject basically comes to that conclusion too. I posted the
link to that before, but here it is again:
http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/#jccpprtTR2.
Perl and Python (and Tcl) are definitely much higher productivity
languages, though a substantial portion of their functionality come
from libraries and so fall into that gray area.
My own philosophy is that libraries are fair game, since nearly all
applications written any language make substantial use of them. It's
also the only rational position WRT MetaCard because so much of the
"language" is really just calls to library routines. The advantage of
MetaCard WRT those other languages therefore comes from its more
complete "library", and the fact that since it's more tightly coupled
with the language, it's much easier to learn and use than libraries in
other languages.
Regards,
Scott
> Regards,
>
> Geoff "I'm up too late, so I'm asking crazy questions" Canyon
>
