Re: ADA and Pascal SUCK, C,C++, and Java are the only languages you need!!

[William & Melissa Thornton <thornton@AVICOM.NET>]

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VERY WELL SAID!

John Stevens wrote:
>
> On Thu, 30 Oct 1997 17:11:26 -0600, Scott Baierl <baierls@schneider.com>
 wrote:
> >
> >Smart programmers spend their time learning programming languages that help
> >them solve the real-world problems in their particular application domain.
>
> Umm. . . no.  Smart programmers live, learn, and grow up to be sofware
> engineers.  Software engineers live, learn, and grow up to be system
> architects.  System architects live, learn, and grow up to be Computer
> Scientists.
>
> The constant in all this is to move from the concrete, to ever more
> abstraction, to higher levels of complexity, and to greater numbers of
> relationships and levels of relationship nesting.
>
> A programmer applies his knowledge of C to write a sorting algorithm
> for integers using a cook book algorithm.
>
> A software engineer queries his architect, develops designs that match
> the system architechture, can be maintained, are of good quality and
> can be easily and effectively tested.  And then he probably helps
> program.
>
> An architect surveys his customers business area, looks at the current set
> of problems to be solved, and the tasks that need doing, matches this
> information against both mature and newer art to design a system that
> can be used to solve immediate problems, streamline communications between
> hitherto separate or even antagonistic sub-systems, provide business
> level control and support, constrain, and assist in the adaption of that
> system to unexpected events or changes.  And then he probably helps do some
> of the engineering and coding.
>
> A Computer scientist is capable of all of the above, including the
> addition of questions of morality and societal impact, as well as
> being able to produce new art to solve problems that have not yet become
> part of existing business systems.
>
> Analogy:  The architect is the guy standing at the top of the hill.  He
> surveys this hill, decides that the inhabitants of this hill are
> wasting time and energy by growing to much food, and that this is occuring
> because to much of this food is being wasted.
>
> He decides that what is needed is: a monetary system to make it easier to
> track and control the flow of food, a communications system to allow the
> inhabitants to organize the flow of food from places where it can be produced
> to places where it cannot be, and a system of roads to do the actual
> transportion of the food to different parts of the hill.
>
> One of the engineers gets the task of solving part of the transportation
> problem by being asked to design the necesary bridge to get across a
> particularly troublesome ravine.  The architect tells the engineer
> to make the bridge out of wood, a minimum of two lanes wide, and capable
> of supporting up to x number of tons.
>
> The engineer decides what kind of bridge would be easiest/best to build
> to cross this particular ravine: suspension, trestle, etc., and draws up
> the specific plans taking into account good engineering practice (water
> sealing the wood, designing a safety factor (x tons + 30%, for example)
> adding on whatever state-of-the art traffic flow control options are
> needed, and available, and putting up signs that specify the weight limit
> of the bridge.
>
> The programmers are the guys carrying the planks, swinging hammers, drilling
> holes and sawing wood.  The keep a weather eye on each plank, making sure
> that it has no flaws, is of good quality, and properly sealed.  They also
> make best effort to ensure that the holes drilled are correct in size and
> placement, that the pieces are cut to best fit, etc.
>
> All the while this is going on, the Scientist is also standing on top of
> the hill, but instead of looking down at the hill beneath his feet, he is
> looking out over the sea that surrounds the island this hill sits on,
> dreaming of ways (flying, anyone?) to get from this hill, to another hill
> on the next island.
>
> Which is why arguing about which language is best is probably outside
> the scope of most of our area of responsibility.  Most of us here are
> not architects, or even engineers.
>
> >I know Pascal, C, C++, COBOL, Fortran, Java, Basic and several variants of
> >Assembler.  None of them is difficult to learn.  Each language has its
> >strong and weak points.  I happen to think that C++ is probably the most
> >versatile language of the bunch, which is why I use it more than the others.
>
> Me, I think that combining languages gives you much more versatility.
>
> John S.

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