On 12/13/2010 3:02 PM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 14:49 -0700, Warren Young wrote:
>> C# exists more for political and business
>> reasons than technical ones; it fills the same space Java could fill, in
>> a platform-agnostic world.
>
> False. C# has significant technical advantages over Java - good
> Generics and LINQ just being two.
I meant to say it was *created* more for political and business reasons
than technical ones. Yes, the two have diverged since that time.
> Another advantage over Java is the namespaces were not created by a
> addled drug addict.
I don't think naming arguments hold much water. Memorization is a key
part of learning any programming language. Nothing is truly intuitive
in computing. ("The only intuitive interface is the nipple.") You may
like your set of names more than another, but they all have to be
memorized if you want to use them.
To the OP's complaint, I think both languages have a similar problem,
that being the depth and scope of each platform's namespaces. They're
both elephantine. With Perl, at least, you can start by ignoring CPAN
and everything they added in Perl 5. The Perl 4 core is a powerful but
readily grasped step up from shell scripting.
Besides, you shouldn't be throwing stones. There's another "mono" that
is currently more common, according to Google.
>> Another poster mentioned a documentation advantage, but I imagine a lot
>> of that advantage is eroded by being Windows and Microsoft centric.
>
> ...The portability is extremely good....
"Extremely?" http://www.mono-project.com/Compatibility
Mono is an impressive project, but you can't tell me someone wouldn't
get into trouble by developing using Microsoft's documentation only.
Besides, CentOS doesn't come with a CLR, so I suspect it's not portable
enough for the OP.
> Strictness is a *feature*. Especially for someone who wants to
> initially learn programming.
The OP already tried that, with Java, and didn't like it.
The argument's bogus anyway. Many experienced programmers want to teach
strictness from the start, apparently without considering how many of
their peers started with a non-strict language. BASIC, shell,
JavaScript, PHP...classic beginner languages each, and probably all with
bigger installed bases than any other interpreted language mentioned in
this thread. Dijkstra's assertion that such languages "...mentally
mutilate [programmers] beyond hope of regeneration..." is disproven by
decades of experience.
I'm assuming you don't wish to argue that the vast majority of
programmers working today are mental cripples.
> -1 Perl is a withering dinosaur.
What roth said. :)