now off topic: Formatting in C++ (fwd)

John Wildberger wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org
Wed Dec 31 14:11:21 UTC 2003


I find it always amusing when highly intelligent people start arguing about 
the pros and cons of computer languages. They are all designed to fill a need 
to accomplish certain tasks. As people have different needs, they will use 
different tools. The degree of complexity is no measure for comparing one 
language with another. Languages evolve from simple to more complex to 
accommodate more and more sophisticred needs. 
The C++ language bears evidence to this. This makes it more valuable rather 
than less. For just understanding basic concepts ObjectiveC is a fine 
language. 
To all  of you, 
Best Wishes for the New Year.
John

On December 31, 2003 11:45 am, Tim Writer wrote:
> Jing Su <jingsu-26n5VD7DAF2Tm46uYYfjYg at public.gmane.org> writes:
> > But computer science curriculums mainly (only?) push the Thread model
> > when talking about concurrent execution.  I've met many people that have
> > a hard time working with asynch event systems, which is too bad.  It's
> > actually quite clean and simple once you get the gist of it.
>
> There's a famous quote from Alan Cox which goes something like this:
>
>     Threads are for programmers who don't understand state machines.
>     Computers are state machines.
>
> > I wonder what the software landscape would be like if curriculums started
> > with ObjectiveC instead of Java, and moved on to concurrent asynch events
> > instead of threads.
>
> I'd like to see them teach two very different languages in parallel in the
> first year, e.g. Java and Scheme.  I suppose you could argue ObjectiveC is
> two very different languages rolled into one. :)

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