Perl or Python?

Phillip Mills phillip.mills1-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org
Mon Jul 6 17:20:31 UTC 2009


----- Message from cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org ---------

> The fundamental problem is that any language that becomes popular
> will, by sheer virtue of popularity, attract the "worst element" of
> bad programmers.

I think that Java programming is affected by both the demographic 
problem that you describe and also by a mismatch between its popularity 
and its design.  People adopt the language under the assumption that 
anything with that much market penetration must be suitable for every 
purpose.  When they discover that it's not, they respond by denying the 
evidence and forcing it.  I believe that kind of thinking is behind the 
Java EE corruption of OOP using components, AOP, reflection, and 
related horrors.

I've been doing primarily object-oriented development -- at least 
nominally -- for about 19 years and I've noticed that when people "get" 
OO modeling they have expectations of the programming language being 
able to mimic the problem space.  Right from the beginning, Java's 
attempts to protect programmers from themselves have caused that 
expectation to fail.  As a result, you get language constructs that aid 
implementation and sabotage design.  Bad design tends to lead to bad 
code.
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