"Unpleaseant Truths" in "Computer Science"

[Sigma_Orionis]

How do we tell truths that might hurt?

I will refrain from any comments till I hear from the usual suspects

[Cyborg Girl]

I find this grimly amusing, insofar as I wonder how horrified Dijkstra would have been by "modern" languages. (This was before ANSI C for instance, only three years after K&R C. C++ wasn't even in the picture.) I also wonder about his opinions on Lisp, which is conspicuously absent from the... umm, screed.

Re how he rips into FORTRAN, I believe at the time was it very inflexible by structured programming standards, whereas F90 and later are basically comparable with C in features. (They just have obnoxious 50s syntax.)

Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail.

I can think of a few languages that might have benefited had their authors taken this idea to heart...

Otherwise I think this is at best curmudgeon material, and at worst the kind of massively elitist computer-geek snobbery that I tend to despise.

Edit: and yes, I know that Dijkstra was a Goliath of applied mathematics and computer science. Too bad that genius doesn't make you infallable.

[FZR1KG]

I think you're both reading too far into it.
It's hard core satirical humour.
Pretty funny really.
Speaks partial truths and multiplies them by infinity squared.

Genius.

[Sigma_Orionis]

And here I thought that Dijkstra had no sense of humor

[code monkey]

i just wish that he'd told us what he really thought instead of holding back.

[squ1d]

I think you're both reading too far into it.
It's hard core satirical humour.
Pretty funny really.
Speaks partial truths and multiplies them by infinity squared.

Yeah.

Dijkstra obviously didn't live to see the cloud era and mobile platform operating systems with apps, millions of happy customers, all built on high level languages.

COBOL does cripple the mind though

[FZR1KG]

COBOL is the words most underrated computer language.
People think it's complex, it's not.
It's a programming language that was devised for one purpose only, to break the minds of programmers by using a language founded in the pits of hell itself. Do not underestimate it. It will send you insane!!!

[squ1d]

Having read the entire language reference several times and mapped the entirety of the syntactical structure of COBOL, I can confirm this

[code monkey]

i've had to code in it. clunky, verbose awful language.

[FZR1KG]

i've had to code in it. clunky, verbose awful language.

Suddenly, I understand you better.

[code monkey]

i've had to code in it. clunky, verbose awful language.

Suddenly, I understand you better.

but i don't understand what you just said.

alas, working in cobol was not my worst coding experience. that honor is reserved for having to update a program written by someone imaginative. the variables all had women's names. i finally realized that the first thing to do was to change those to dull, unimaginative names that reflected what the variables were.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Opinion? Dijkstra is an asshole, a very smart one, but an asshole nevertheless. And I doubt that had he lived to see Cloud Computing and the shift to Mobile Devices he would think differently.

Why do I think so? The man was gifted in applied mathematics, no doubt about that, and the vast majority of his rants are reasonable. However, he seemed to have a very poor opinion of people who have to deal with the practical implementation of Computer Science: IT. He complained quite loudly because (apparently and particularly in the US) people tended to say "Computer Science" when they meant IT. Hell, I don't know where he got that from. Maybe it was like that in the 50s, even the 60s, but by the time I went to school it was quite clear that Computer Science and IT are two different animals altogether. In any case, from what I have read about him, he seldom bothered to actually use the tools of the trade. Up till ten years before he died, he didn't use any kind of computers, only then and after being prodded he actually used a Mac for email and to surf the web.

So basically I don't like him because from what I have read about him, people like me would be dirt to him. And besides, the asshole liked to lecture, if I am going to get lectured I would expect to get it from someone who at least has some practical experience, like Donald Knuth for example.

As for Cobol, meh, saw it in college (I didn't go study Computer Science, because that would mean that the only job I'd get here would be writing code, at best, and in those days that meant spending my day writing reports in Cobol or RPG ) as an elective because I was curious. Never liked it.

And now, just to piss squid off, I give you Larry Wall talking about the 5 programming languages everyone should know why should it piss squid off? the line about Java being "the modern day Cobol" should do it

[squ1d]

Larry Wall wrote perl. Enough said.

[squ1d]

At the end of the day, good developers use whatever tools are appropriate and make good software. I've never met a customer that gives a fuck what language their software is written in, they only seem to care if it is good software or not. I might not like COBOL syntactically because I have to deal with its parser, but a great deal of the worlds transaction processing software hums along processing billions of transactions, without seeming to give a fuck that it is written in COBOL.

As a software developer, I'm just going to develop software. Others can stand around holding their dicks, advocating one language over another because its functional, or because it allows lambda expressions, or because they can argue that it is more intellectually defensible, and can use these arguments to make themselves feel superior to others. But those people talk about software in this way to mask their deep feelings of personal inadequacy and are widely recognized as being no fun at all at parties.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I am shocked, shocked! squid, how can you defile the faith in such a cavalier manner?

It's funny, but do you know how many times I have had to hear a stuffed suit attempt to lecture ME about how they "don't want technical perfection, just want something that works"? which usually triggers an answer that in essence says "You mean, something that won't crash every day and doesn't make you call me every day to tell me is too slow? if that is the case, SFTU and let me do my job asswipe"

If Dijkstra ever did something worth sending him to hell. and hell actually exists, dealing with those characters would be his own personal hell indeed

[FZR1KG]

i've had to code in it. clunky, verbose awful language.

Suddenly, I understand you better.

You need to read my post before that one.

[code monkey]

You need to read my post before that one.

you're calling me insane? that's so nice!

[code monkey]

I am shocked, shocked! squid, how can you defile the faith in such a cavalier manner?

It's funny, but do you know how many times I have had to hear a stuffed suit attempt to lecture ME about how they "don't want technical perfection, just want something that works"? which usually triggers an answer that in essence says "You mean, something that won't crash every day and doesn't make you call me every day to tell me is too slow? if that is the case, SFTU and let me do my job asswipe"

i just don't understand it, sigma. with your elegant turn of phrase and gift for lauguages why aren't you a diplomat?

[FZR1KG]

You need to read my post before that one.

you're calling me insane? that's so nice!

Insanity is like ignorance.
Everyone has some.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I am shocked, shocked! squid, how can you defile the faith in such a cavalier manner?

It's funny, but do you know how many times I have had to hear a stuffed suit attempt to lecture ME about how they "don't want technical perfection, just want something that works"? which usually triggers an answer that in essence says "You mean, something that won't crash every day and doesn't make you call me every day to tell me is too slow? if that is the case, SFTU and let me do my job asswipe"

i just don't understand it, sigma. with your elegant turn of phrase and gift for lauguages why aren't you a diplomat?

Funny you should mention that, down here I am considered a curmudgeon with no social skills. Which leads me to believe that at least in THIS country, being a diplomat requires having high tolerance for idiots.

[Sigma_Orionis]

You need to read my post before that one.

you're calling me insane? that's so nice!

Which makes Mr. Mono a valued member of our asylum.......

[code monkey]

i just don't understand it, sigma. with your elegant turn of phrase and gift for lauguages why aren't you a diplomat?

Funny you should mention that, down here I am considered a curmudgeon with no social skills. Which leads me to believe that at least in THIS country, being a diplomat requires having high tolerance for idiots.

i can't believe that. you a curmudgeon? no social skills? oh dear. you may have a certain impatience with fools but i'd never describe you like that. a typical american must be seen as a total barbarian.

btw, i've seen a diplomat defined as someone who can tell you to go to hell and make you look forward to the trip.

[code monkey]

...
you're calling me insane? that's so nice!

Which makes Mr. Mono a valued member of our asylum.......

why thank you, sigma. (how can nyone say that you have no social skills?) and may i wish you a happy anniversary? many more happy, healthy ones.

[Sigma_Orionis]

i can't believe that. you a curmudgeon? no social skills? oh dear. you may have a certain impatience with fools but i'd never describe you like that. a typical american must be seen as a total barbarian.

Well, the general perception on you gringos (and that includes Canadians TSC ) is that you are uptight, distant and cold, lacking human warmth. There are a couple of more things, but they should go on another thread.

btw, i've seen a diplomat defined as someone who can tell you to go to hell and make you look forward to the trip.

Yeah, I've heard that quote, It takes too much work to do that, so I just say it in a way they can't outright go complain to my boss that I'm rude

...
why thank you, sigma. (how can nyone say that you have no social skills?) and may i wish you a happy anniversary? many more happy, healthy ones.

Thanks

Edited to Fix Quote

[Cyborg Girl]

At the end of the day, good developers use whatever tools are appropriate and make good software.

Speaking of appropriate tools...

I recall you saying at one point that "functional programming is stupid" (I believe this was related to Microsoft's F# language). I'm kind of wondering now what you meant by that.

(For the record I've been working a bit at the Haskell version of the 99 Prolog Problems; but slowly and not very enthusiastically, because what is self-evident in C, I don't even know where to begin on in Haskell. Avoiding mutable state is hard... But then, so is all programming, at least from where I stand right now.)