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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: What is wrong with OO ? Date: 1997/01/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 209223331 references: <32D11FD3.41C6@wi.leidenuniv.nl> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.object,comp.software-eng Date: 1997-01-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bjarne, in the middle of a very nice extended discussion of C++, says "Had C++ not been relatively easy to learn and use reasonably well, it would have disappeared long ago. By relative I mean the amount of effort needed compared to the amount of benefit gained." Hmmm! I don't think I buy that. People will learn what is at hand pretty much regardless of whether something is easy to learn and use. After all I am sure that far more programs are written using macro languages of spread sheets, most of which are truly awful, very difficult to use, and pretty difficult to learn. Nevertheless people do at least "sort of" learn something regardless. Actually elsewhere in his article, Bjarne complains of this phenomenon :-) By the way just a quick note on spreadsheet languages. I saw a couple of years ago a fairly comprehensive study of spread sheet programs (if you don't think of spread sheets as a programming language, then you don't know what people are trying to do with these programs :-) It showed that over 50% of production spread sheets in use at Fortune 500 companies that were studied contained serious errors. Now of course any such survey is subject to concerns about sampling stablity. Still one would think that such a result would spread wide alarm, but as far as I can tell everyone shrugged and continued ("it must be the other guy who has all the errors, I am sure my spreadsheets are fine!") Going back to the main subject, which is the allegation that popularity indicates ease of learning and use, I think the point is that such popularity indicates accesibility more than anything else. By accessibility I mean that something is available, viewed as hot, and can be learned well enough to do *something*. Consider the situation today, students want to learn Java, not C++, they see C++ as yesterday's language, and Java as the language of tomorrow. Just from the incredible rate at which Java books are cascading into bookstores, I have to guess that the rate of learning of Java far exceeds the rate of learning of C++. But I would NOT conclude from this that Java is easier to learn or use than C++. Maybe it is, but you cannot conclude anything just from popularity. Ada folks have never played the game of claiming popularity as an indicator of any kind of quality, because they have not been able to. I realize that C++ is in a position to make such claims, but I recommend against it, because I think you will find that your arguments will backfire as Java becomes the next hot language, at least for a while :-) Robert