On Thu, Oct 22, 1998 at 04:15:37PM -0400, Urb LeJeune wrote:
> > I leave the counterexamples as an exercise to the reader. ;-)
>
> There have been more lines of COBOL code written than in all other
> programming languages combined ... by a factor of 4.
I'm sure this is true. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that
there's more Fortran still executing than C, or that there's more
Visual Basic used than Java. And so on. But this has no bearing
at all on the discussion at hand.
Why?
Because "more" most emphatically does not equal "better". Elegance
of design -- which is what I was talking about -- is a property utterly
unrelated to popularity. It does, however, seem to be related to
the mechanics of the design process, in that designs done solo (or in
very small groups) have a much higher chance of turning out to be at
least minimally elegant, while those done by committee have a high
probability of turning out to be bag-on-the-side-of-a-bag-of-a-bag affairs.
This seems to be true in just about any field of endeavor that I can
think of: software, music, architecture, literature, art, engineering.
The finest and most enduring work, whether it's Frank Lloyd Wright,
Shakespeare, or Bronowski, always seems to come from a single inspired mind,
or perhaps a few minds at most. I'm having a hard time thinking up
counterexamples.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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