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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-08 02:59:42 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!newsfeed.stueberl.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!dialin-145-254-044-006.arcor-ip.NET!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 11:59:22 +0200 Organization: At home Message-ID: References: Reply-To: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de NNTP-Posting-Host: dialin-145-254-044-006.arcor-ip.net (145.254.44.6) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de 1081418381 92446634 I 145.254.44.6 ([77047]) User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6841 Date: 2004-04-08T11:59:22+02:00 List-Id: Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote: > Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > >> > Why you, not being an American, use this luck-based theory, which is >> > proprietary American? -:) >> >> I lost my faith in Karl Marx long time ago! (:-)) > > Did you also lost faith in Pythagorean theorem after studying > non-Euclidian and differential geometries? I mean, do you believe now that > relation between sides of a triangle depends upon luck only? -:) Science is not a subject of belief! (:-)) >> BTW, there is no big difference between the "luck-based" theory and one >> of Marin. Both agree that technical issues are irrelevant. The >> "luck-based" theory stops here. Marin and you continue that probably >> managers have some other [supreme, unknowable] reasons for their choices. >> Maybe. But this changes nothing. And nothing techincal can be made about >> Ada to change that. Because see above, technical issues are irrelevant. > > No. At least one major technical issue is relevant - it is anticipated > lifecycle for a product. ... only if that is shorter than the "lifecycle" of a manager. > Long lifecycles are much less influenced by luck > (whatever it means) than short lifecycles. And Ada was specifically > designed for long lifecycles, and what is particularly important here - > for anticipated long lifecycles. It is a technical argument. Try it on a manager and hear what he will reply. > (Actually any kind of big volume > suppresses influence of luck - it need not be specifically volume of > time.) If you want to say that market does not work in the case of monopoly, then you are right. The problem is that the system [of software product business] has a positive feedback. It natively produces monopolies. Small noise on the input produces an enormous random output. All that is summarized by one short word *luck*. >> So Java was in the right time at the right place. > > This argument - "right time at the right place" is as binded to the Luck > theory (let's call it Luckism -:) as the progressive role of working class > to Marxism. Yes of course. >> > There was real matter that time - dot-coms were booming and there was >> > widespread strong feeling about the need of easily distributable >> > specialized clients for online shopping. > >> Mmm, that was 3 years or so later. > > 3 years or so later you could read about that in newspapers. Application > programmers felt, knew and discussed that need at least 1 year before > emergence of Java. Yes, and this supports "Luckism"! They felt, discussed and what was the result? Could fathers of cybernetics imagine VisualBasic crowning their efforts? (:-)) >> > And this was the trampoline for >> > Java - applets. Then, after several years, dot-com bubble bursted, >> > applets faded, >> >> And of course, we do not ask ourselves, why. Because that would lead us >> to those unloved technical issues... > > Well, you are wrong here. We asked ourselves, and not *after*, but before > applets faded - actually when Java specs were published. And at least for > some of us (including me) the answer was clear and purely technical: JVM > appeared a bad virtual machine - plainly bad, by its specs. All other > things (including Java language itself) were secondary, but failure in JVM > specs was certainly irrecoverable. Well, you may ask - why I think (or > thought) that JVM is a bad machine - and I'll answer that if you saw > enough various architectures you should see it yourself, but if not then I > can't explain... I can say only one thing on this matter: if you look at > JVM specs without prior knowlegde about its purpose you have no chance to > guess that purpose, and that's enough. See, all this was irrelevant to the success of Java. You may cry that 2x2=4, but if 2x2=5 sells better it will! "Luckism" teaches us, that in the equation 2x2=n sells good, n cannot be predicted. (:-)) >> Isn't it mysterious, how universities are promoting bad technologies? It >> was C and UNIX before Java. > > Well, there are different kinds of promotion of technologies by > universities. For example, I have nothing against Berkeley's promotions of > C and Unix those times - because they really contributed to the > techologies thus obtaining actual experience, and did not just propagate > unproven and obviously suspectible things. Come on, UNIX was a great set-back in OS architecture, design and ideology. Its spreading was a catastrophe outperformed by only Windows. If someone could esimate the losses resulting in this twin disaster! -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov www.dmitry-kazakov.de