From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,fca456da8e6ec463 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-01-28 22:10:06 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-04!supernews.com!feed.textport.net!newsfeed.stanford.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Latin, Shakespeare, and other irrelevant topics Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 06:04:48 GMT Organization: Deja.com Message-ID: <95315u$3ca$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <94p9fl$a1g$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <94qbb4$bs1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <94rkj1$d4r$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87k87i2ha7.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> <94vnup$kia$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <952hmb$niq$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Jan 29 06:04:48 2001 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; U) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x57.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:4645 Date: 2001-01-29T06:04:48+00:00 List-Id: In article <952hmb$niq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar wrote: > In article > , > Brian Rogoff wrote: > > > The Shakespeare worship I have a question, and it even has a (slender) relevance to Ada. Have you ever seen a Shakespeare play done by a really good company? Perhaps not ... if not, then perhaps you are making the same error that some people make when it comes to Ada, dismissing it without really knowing much about it. Going back to your question, about how I would react to an art form I dislike, I can think of one, which is Heavy Metal Rock (I don't dislike all Rock), but that means I don't listen to it, which means I know nothing about it, which means that I would not give any judgment on its worth. My son Keith has really broad musical tastes (and is very knowledgable -- he worked in the classical section of Tower for a number of years). When he was in high school, and I would arrive home, it was a toss up whether Mozart or some variety of loud rock music (I don't even know the genre well enough to know *exactly* what constitutes heavy metal :-) Once I came home, and it was the latter, and when I asked Keith to turn it down, he said "Dad! You have such narrow musical tastes!" When it comes to programming languages, it is amazing how many people dismiss programming languages they know absolutely nothing about. How many people do you know who in some sense are experts in the PL field who don't know COBOL or VB, but are quite sure that both these languages are junk. Back to Shakespeare. It is one thing to say: "I really don't appreciate Shakespeare, or understand what people see in him", and quite another to say "Shakespeare is shallow" without being a serious student of Shakespeare (no doubt there are some who *are* serious students, and who would claim him to be shallow -- their arguments would be interesting to listen to). Back to Programming Languages. It is one thing to say "I don't really know language XXX, so I can't really make a judgment on what it is good for", and quite another to say "language XXX is a piece of junk" [without really knowing language XXX]. Gosh, an Ada relevance of sorts in this thread (Pascal, if your news reader is still forcing you to actually read all these messages, then you can find the magic word :-) Robert Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/