[lbo-talk] Speaking of intelligence....

[ravi]

On Nov 26, 2007, at 10:16 PM, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2007 11:17 PM, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>> The reverse of that question is also legitimate: why are we using C  
>> or
>> Perl or Assembly? Because, after many an attempt to do without, we
>> find that we cannot! I believe there is a bit of truth to both sides:
>> languages can be a lot more programmer/user-friendly but also complex
>> tasks require complex expression. The latter was part of the point I
>> was trying to make about real world code.
>
> I think we use languages like C because they won in the marketplace.
> <...>
> Programming languages are products. Some win in the marketplace. Just
> as Kernighan and Mashey claimed, I too agree there's a technical bar
> that successful systems must pass, but beyond that minimal standard,
> nontechnical factors can dominate.

Somewhat true, but this is relevant only when we compare languages  
that have succeeded to similar ones that failed. So, for instance  
PROLOG, Lisp or SNOBOL failed (mostly) in comparison to C or Java and  
in many ways that's a tragedy. But when we compare C to Python, or  
Assembly to Java or C#, the issue is not one of marketplace, nor have  
people not attempted to implement what was done in C in Python or  
something else, amidst rosy claims that interpreter penalties are the  
fear of old people.

The rest I agree with.

So bringing this back to the original thread... is the idea of a one- 
click hackable Python based UI (and toolset, etc) a revolutionary  
break that should give techies and non-techies a boner? I don't think  
so -- or at least there is no reaction in the trou at this point ;-).  
Its a neat idea, like Apple's Automator, or Sun's DTrace.

	--ravi