Re: ADA and Pascal SUCK, C,C++, and Java are the only languages you need!!

[jstevens@samoyed.ftc.nrcs.usda.gov (John Stevens)]

On Thu, 30 Oct 1997 17:11:26 -0600, Scott Baierl <baierls@schneider.com> wrote:
>
>Smart programmers spend their time learning programming languages that help
>them solve the real-world problems in their particular application domain.

Umm. . . no.  Smart programmers live, learn, and grow up to be sofware
engineers.  Software engineers live, learn, and grow up to be system
architects.  System architects live, learn, and grow up to be Computer
Scientists.

The constant in all this is to move from the concrete, to ever more
abstraction, to higher levels of complexity, and to greater numbers of
relationships and levels of relationship nesting.

A programmer applies his knowledge of C to write a sorting algorithm
for integers using a cook book algorithm.

A software engineer queries his architect, develops designs that match
the system architechture, can be maintained, are of good quality and
can be easily and effectively tested.  And then he probably helps
program.

An architect surveys his customers business area, looks at the current set
of problems to be solved, and the tasks that need doing, matches this
information against both mature and newer art to design a system that
can be used to solve immediate problems, streamline communications between
hitherto separate or even antagonistic sub-systems, provide business
level control and support, constrain, and assist in the adaption of that
system to unexpected events or changes.  And then he probably helps do some
of the engineering and coding.

A Computer scientist is capable of all of the above, including the
addition of questions of morality and societal impact, as well as
being able to produce new art to solve problems that have not yet become
part of existing business systems.

Analogy:  The architect is the guy standing at the top of the hill.  He
surveys this hill, decides that the inhabitants of this hill are
wasting time and energy by growing to much food, and that this is occuring
because to much of this food is being wasted.

He decides that what is needed is: a monetary system to make it easier to
track and control the flow of food, a communications system to allow the
inhabitants to organize the flow of food from places where it can be produced
to places where it cannot be, and a system of roads to do the actual
transportion of the food to different parts of the hill.

One of the engineers gets the task of solving part of the transportation
problem by being asked to design the necesary bridge to get across a
particularly troublesome ravine.  The architect tells the engineer
to make the bridge out of wood, a minimum of two lanes wide, and capable
of supporting up to x number of tons.

The engineer decides what kind of bridge would be easiest/best to build
to cross this particular ravine: suspension, trestle, etc., and draws up
the specific plans taking into account good engineering practice (water
sealing the wood, designing a safety factor (x tons + 30%, for example)
adding on whatever state-of-the art traffic flow control options are
needed, and available, and putting up signs that specify the weight limit
of the bridge.

The programmers are the guys carrying the planks, swinging hammers, drilling
holes and sawing wood.  The keep a weather eye on each plank, making sure
that it has no flaws, is of good quality, and properly sealed.  They also
make best effort to ensure that the holes drilled are correct in size and
placement, that the pieces are cut to best fit, etc.

All the while this is going on, the Scientist is also standing on top of
the hill, but instead of looking down at the hill beneath his feet, he is
looking out over the sea that surrounds the island this hill sits on,
dreaming of ways (flying, anyone?) to get from this hill, to another hill
on the next island.

Which is why arguing about which language is best is probably outside
the scope of most of our area of responsibility.  Most of us here are
not architects, or even engineers.

>I know Pascal, C, C++, COBOL, Fortran, Java, Basic and several variants of
>Assembler.  None of them is difficult to learn.  Each language has its
>strong and weak points.  I happen to think that C++ is probably the most
>versatile language of the bunch, which is why I use it more than the others.

Me, I think that combining languages gives you much more versatility.

John S.