-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
ouster@tcl.eng.sun.com (John Ousterhout) writes:
> OK, enough is enough. I can see that I'm not going to be able to fool you
> guys. I confess everything. You're right. It all *was* an evil
> conspiracy. There really isn't a shred of merit in Tcl, or C++, or Perl,
> or C; there is not a single reason on earth why anyone should use any of
> these languages for any programming task. Scheme truly is the perfect
> language that solves every problem and combines the virtues of every
> other language. For years we've been plotting to trick programmers into
> using bad languages. Yes, I mean "we". Many many people have participated
> in this sinister plot, including Larry Wall, Dennis Ritchie, Bill Gates,
> the Bureau of ATF, most of the LAPD, and Mark Fuhrman (sorry you guys, but
> the truth has overwhelmed me so I've been forced to expose you). I feel
> just terrible at how I have set the programming world back, and I promise
> to be a good boy from now on.
>
> Now that that's over with, you can all get back to work now.
Dear Professor O,
I hope you are just trying to be hilariously humorous in an emotional
argument to lighten up everyone, not really overwhelmed by the
personal attacks which are quite normal around the net (unless you are
too busy and seldom have time to stay long enough to witness that,
which I suspect being the case). I tend to think they are a normal
part of the cyberlife, whether we like it or not. Please get back to
doing your good work and gently ignore them. Also, when you are now
working for a company with clout and commercial interests in seeing
certain tools/languages succeed, suspicions (minus the ad hominim
part) that you have a mercurial motives are actually healthy and do
help us avoid being "taken" by hypes and infomercials.
I must say that your paper (which undoubtedly can be improved in many
ways) truly has had an enormous impact on all the programmers/project
leaders as I have not seen that much discussions on any other topic
recently in so many programming groups. This alone should hopefully
motivate all us of to read and think carefully about what you have
written, and give you more reason to follow up the topic with more
rigorous and convincing results and demonstrations. Languages like
Perl and Tcl (well, I cannot help putting Perl ahead of Tcl :-) have
been looked down upon by some as tools to craft quick-and-dirty
solutions, yet their successes in mission-critical projects
contradicts such views (actually they can be used for the full
spectrum from q&d to enterprise-level applications, which is the
beauty of it all). Your research and explanation will help such
successes, so please do continue, for the good of the community,
please say yes.
john
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: http://www.ifcss.org/~zshen/ faith,hope,love http://www.cnet.com/
iQB1AwUBM06IYTagfthcdazpAQE5sQL/TaHv5E+ZFa0ex1zoTfYAIdVNt+RFIGFe
wNhdsJmCoxn/kYQKmXwrmEicAo6O0nxTj5iWlpCPgPKEjaKcmLbzDmvaDtbxkJqk
lW3WPS/1LmCmQnt8oMcNVh87TYtXigBp
=m8xn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|