Re: Latin, Shakespeare, and other irrelevant topics

["Mark Lundquist" <mark@rational.com>]

David Starner <dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu> wrote in message
news:954e7d$8q61@news.cis.okstate.edu...
>
> And sometimes ... I read an article on the net explaining that assembly
> was so great, and it has all the advantages of a high level language
> except for portability, and *that you should listen to the people
> who program half their code in assembly, because the others don't
> know the language*.

Well there the nature of the argument is a bit different.  Assembly vs. HLLs
is all about level of abstraction.  In the case of language X vs. language
Y, the argument is often partially about level abstraction (especially where
X or Y is  "Ada" :-), but to a lesser degree, and also in combination with
other factors rather than just level of abstraction alone.  But regarding
assembly vs. HLL's, I don't think deep knowledge of some particular
machine-level programming model is required in order to make intellgent
statements about the issues (although I'm sure a  person who has done some
significant assembly programming as well as HLL programming is in a position
to have some unique insights into the tradeoffs).

> If you require someone to know a language inside
> and out before having an opinion on it, only the people who will have
> an opinion on it are those who love it enough to spend all that time
> learning it.
>

That seems a bit reactionary :-)  Robert's point seemed pretty innocent --
it was just that one ought to have some authentic knowledge if they're going
to have opinions about something.  It seems hard to argue against that! :-)
Otherwise, as Mark Twain said, they are not real opinions at all, only "corn
pone opinions" -- either hearsay or speculation, or both.  Just like when
people say "Ada must suck, because it was designed by a committee", because
they heard someone else say this, and that person got it from the "New
Hacker's Dictionary", etc.  Dewar's point seems to be not about the
completeness of one's knowledge, but about the firsthand nature of it.

I don't know Ada inside and out, and I've been corrected more than a few
times by Dewar and others, but I've never been made to feel as if I'm being
told that I'm unqualified to participate in the discussions we have in
this forum.  Dewar *does* happen to know the language inside and out, so
he's often in a position to do the correcting, but you can't really hold
that against him :-)

Best Regards,
Mark Lundquist

P.S.  A while back I started to notice that dialogs and arguments tend to
get driven to extremes of position.  And once I started to notice this, I
began to notice it everywhere I looked :-).  I don't know if this is a
Western cultural thing, or a modern thing, or what.  But while everybody
readily admits that extremes are to be avoided, we all seem unwilling to let
someone else hold a moderate position! :-)   For instance, if you make a
statement like "Laizzes-faire economics does produces undesirable results",
someone will say "Oh, so you're some kind of socialist, is that it?"  If you
argue against an extreme position, people assume you are advocating the
opposite extreme, and it
takes a lot of convincing to get them to believe that you aren't doing that.
Funny!