On Fri, 14 Apr 2017 04:09 am, Rustom Mody wrote: > On Thursday, April 13, 2017 at 11:14:15 PM UTC+5:30, Steve D'Aprano wrote: >> Meyer's "Considered Harmful Essays Considered Harmful" essay is >> hypocritical junk, and should be considered harmful. > > Your view.
Well duh :-) > Here's an alternative. > [Sorry its a vague memory of something I read more than a decade ago that > [I cant > trace again] > Some unknown Cobol programmer talking about Dijkstra: > > Dijkstra used his enormous prestige to destroy Cobol. "Imminent Death Of Cobol Predicted. Again." When the sun finally expands into a supergiant in five billion years, destroying the earth, the last survivors to die will be COBOL-programming cockroaches and Keith Richards. > We lost a great deal > What did he gain? > Ok so Cobol's control constructs are below par > But do any of its modern successors have its data-describing properties? > [the PIC clause] If PIC is so great, why do no other languages have it? That's a serious question, not a rhetorical question. > Or consider(!) Alan Kay's statement: "Arrogance in computer science is > measured in nanodijktras" Indeed. What's your point? Because that sounds awfully like an ad hominem fallacy. Dijkstra was arrogant, therefore he must be wrong. > Maybe that's a response to similar violent, unnecessary barbs from > Dijkstra? "Violent"? Are you one of those people who think that calling a person an idiot is morally indistinguishable from beating them into a coma? "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but that's nothing to the harm caused by a few mean words." -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list