In article <334B68EC.3F66@maths.anu.edu.au>, Graham Matthews
<graham.matthews@maths.anu.edu.au> writes:
|>
|> There is a much simpler reason why all these ugly languages about -- its
|> called intertia. There was a lot of code written in the 70s in ugly
|> languages -- written before we knew how to make good languages. All that
|> code has to be supported, interfaced to, etc, so all the ugly languges
|> it is written in are now the standard. Simple.
Sorry, but this doesn't really make sense. For example, if "ugly languages"
refers to Tcl or Perl or C++, none of these languages even existed in the
1970s. In contrast, various flavors of Lisp have been around since at least
the early 60's and Smalltalk first appeared in the late 60's. Every single
programmer who ever wrote a program in Tcl, Perl, C++, Visual Basic, or even
C could have chosen Lisp, Scheme, or Smalltalk. But they didn't. If you
want to know the truth, I think you need to stop making superficial excuses
and ask deeper semantic questions. There really is something better about
each of these "ugly languages" that gives them an advantage over the "good"
languages; I'll leave it up to you to figure out what it is.
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