Les Mikesell wrote: > On 6/14/2011 12:19 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> >> I'm an admin. I'm a contractor. > > Oh - OK. Then you aren't expected to care about the long term > consequences. Yes, I bloody well am. I work for a federal contractor, and as long as they have the multi-year contract, and my boss likes me, I have the job. And even if I didn't, as a professional, it friggin' DOES matter to me. > >>> OK, but what was that about things like ruby and java? (Java being more >>> or less OK now...). If you don't use/need software from this decade, >>> then maybe it isn't a big issue for you either way. >> >> "This decade"? Oh, come *on* Mike, be real. Just because the languages >> they use are changing continually doesn't mean that a *language* >> compiler or interpreter a couple-three years old shouldn't work. > > The flip side of that is that you are ignoring thousands (millions?) of > man-hours of development work in improvements that could be yours for > free. They're not *my* work. I don't get the chance to code any more. And yes, improvements... where a language changes year to year? It used to be that it took *years* to get a major change through (say, K&R to ANSI). Now they come along as frequently as updates to, um, fedora. If it were up to me, I wouldn't *touch* some of that stuff till it soaked for a year or two. Oddly enough, I just read this book review on slashdot, which mentioned something I'd never heard of: the Software Craftsmanship Movement. Seems to be advocating things, some of which I've bitched and moaned about how things sould be done for decades. mark mark