Re: languages

[Luis Araujo]

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> Ousterhout's talk is now a long time ago, and it is interesting to look
> at how the landscape has changed since then. Consider:

Less than 10 years isn't a long time ago, and i doubt his basic ideas 
have changed during this time.

> There are (at least) two classes of "scripting" languages:
>
>   1. The ones where declaring types is optional or impossible
>      (e.g. lua)
>   2. The ones where even fields and variables are declared implicitly
>      (e.g. python)

Both of which already existed when Ousterhout gave the talk. So, i think 
it isn't fair to try to discredit the guy with this argument. [1]

> And then, in Ousterhout's comparison, there are statically typed
> languages like C. Osterhout's objections to C are largely incorrect. On
> the one hand, C does *not* provide strong typing. On the other,
> Ousterhout seems to miss the elements of "convenience" and
> "abstraction" (which is essential for reuse), both of which are very
> important to the success of scripting languages.

Miss it?, but he even keeps talking about it. [1]

> I was never convinced by Ousterhout's argument -- at the time I was
> working in the language tools group at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and our
> observation was that no program *ever* ends up staying 10-20 lines over
> its lifetime, and if you don't plain to maintain from the start you are
> doomed. But even if you *do* accept his argument, it's worthwhile to
> notice that the programming landscape has changed, and the argument may
> no longer be true today.

Though i never meant to bring a language polemic here with my comments, 
but better to use them as an analogy for our current OS state, i still 
doubt his (Ousterhout) arguments in the programming languages field are 
less valid (and it might actually sound ironic) than those arguments 
(usually more deprecated and obsoletes) present in the operating system 
community nowadays.

Sincerely,



                        Luis

[1] http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html