Subject: Re: Java as an indicator of stupidity (was Re: What is a monad?)
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 2000/01/25
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.functional,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.java
Message-ID: <86jq5m$tsu29@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Matthew M. Huntbach <mmh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> wrote:
+---------------
| I rather suspect that people who had learnt BASIC as a child and
| then learnt FORTRAN in eight weeks on a science degree are part of the
| explanation for this horrible badly structured code that needs this
| expensive maintaining, which has been discussed in this thread.
+---------------

And as Edsger Dijkstra said (way back in 1975!) in "How to Tell Truths
That Might Hurt" (reprinted in his "Selected Writings on Computing",
Springer-Verlag):

	It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students
	that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers
	they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
And:
	The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore,
	be regarded as a criminal offense.
And:
	FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now [1975] nearly 20 years
	old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application
	you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too
	expensive to use.

Nice to see how much things have improved in the 25 years since 1975... NOT!


-Rob

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Rob Warnock, 8L-846		rpw3@sgi.com
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