Re: status of PL/I as a viable language

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote:
: Meanwhile, some years back, the small town of Kennesaw,

it is puzzling to see that people who professionally deal with
logic (programmers) start falling for any particular evidence supporting
something, despite its logical incompleteness, as long as it is in favour
of their views. On either side.

- Of course, one has to ask what kind of place Kennesaw is.
One has to ask how high the percentage of social cohesion
and homogeneity in a town like this is. From what I hear there
is no need to force people to get a gun in parts of Los Angeles,
however it is not particularly silent there.

- One has to ask why it is--again--not seen that the Kennesaw
success might as well have had to do with the "Hawthorne
experiment" effect. It works in part because everyone gets
involved, the emphasis being on getting involved, not on being
cretin or not, and not on weapons.

- One has to ask whether an average sample town is free
of Montagus and Capulets.  And for practical purposes the
average has to be the modus of towns of this kind, because
otherwise it is just one sample that seems to have displayed
some characteristics that cannot really be predicted to occur
elsewhere, given the same requirements.

- One has to assume(!) that there are no cretins in each town
to wich this model can be ported, if it can, see above. For
otherwise people couldn't trust each other; I guess you haven't
missed the "trust discussion" in the USA. Imagine: Every step
you make you will have one hand near your weapon.  - There is
more to add, as to every one-factor-theory.  - So, ...

- Facing community issues, one has to remember, how, for example,
men and women of (protestant christian) god, with no weapons
and a very homogeous social life
deal with people in their community who chose to obey differing
moral rules.  Rules which, as moral rules, are o.K. even for the
conservative U.S. citizen but not for the chiefs in the community.
For (an extreme) example, consider the Hutterer communities:
At best, the "disobedient" will have to leave, banned (without any
possesions). (Not exactly "fault tolerant social software", these
rules.)

As far as drawing conclusions from this example is concerned,
same thing as in the Kennesaw case: interesting but not near
general enough.

Certainly "Bowling for Columbine" is biased, but can you
explain, using Kennesaw theory, why there are less killings
per person in Canada, and why they don't lock their doors in
Toronto, apparently?

It is almost the same as saying, Ada is The Right Programming
Language because in a particular project, some goal had
been achieved. Even in a largely complexity-reduced field
such as programming, a one factor theory is just not enough,
it is detrimental.

And, finally, and most importantly, murder doesn't require the
murderer to have a gun, and gun owners have been murdered more
than once.