[geeks] Software Bloat

[Doctor Obnox Son of a Bitch]

David Cantrell, reeling from the shock, managed on Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 07:19:47PM +0000 to scrawl:
> Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > > Maybe the next time a team decides to take on the wordprocessor market,
> > > they should consider just building a small simple little run time, and
> > > then build the rest on top using python or guile (I'm partial to guile,
> > > but python might be more palletable to people like my parents).
> > Ruby would be better.  :-)
> > Smalltalk would be ideal.
> > Scheme isn't bad though, and ANSI Common Lisp is OK too.
> 
> I don't think it matters too much.  To a non-programmer - like my parents,
> or, I imagine, Joshua's - then python, guile, lisp, ruby, smalltalk, tcl,
> perl, vb, and any of the other scripting languages, are all equally alien.
> So what if perl lets you get closer to an English sentence, or if ruby is
> more orthogonal, or if smalltalk lets you Do More With Less.  Doesn't
> matter which one you go for, you've still got to learn logic, basic maths,
> and a whole new language family* when you learn your first programming
> language.
> 
> OTOH, if we assume that most users won't touch the scripting language and
> that it'll be people like us who use it to write applications for users
> on top of the base of C, then we need to support more than one language.
> I can't stand python, and no doubt the pythonistas can't stand perl, and
> everyone hates java apart from the J2EE fanboys, and ... well, if we *do*
> support only one language, then scheme, common lisp, or smalltalk, in that
> order of preference, would get my vote.
> 


obliq


> > What we (i.e. software developers and computer types in general) really
> > need to do is to find a way to teach the masses how to do more with less.
> 
> And to do that they need to be provided with tools *and* the education to
> use them.  The tools ain't a problem.  The education is.  The school-level
> computer education I see here is oriented to making sure the drones know
> how to drive a word processor in dummy mode.
> 
> > > Writing systems like this in a scripting language could be considered a sign of
> > > bloat by some people.  It probably would require more disk space.  But, it 
> > > should make the software more maintainable, and hopefully faster (easier to 
> > > work with language usually means easier to optimize, plus you can always
> > > rewrite critical parts in C if need be), and if it is those 2 things, most
> > > people won't care about the disk space.
> > 
> > You're right about that first sentence, at least according to every
> > Emacs detractor I've ever heard from!  ;-)
> 
> I'm an emacs detractor, and I don't think it's overly bloated for what it
> does.  The 20Mb that it takes on my box is 20Mb crammed with features.
> 
> > However you're also right on the money in the last sentence too.  Look
> > around on the net for the "autobiography" about the development of
> > AutoCAD and the decision to use lisp as its extension language.
> 
> Mmmmm ... I loved that language!
> 
> * - family in the sense of Indo-European vs Semitic vs Dravidian vs
> Computer**.  It's all in the syntax.  I remember my confusion coming across
> the dual in Arabic for the first time (arabic has singular, dual and plural).
> Computer languages have lots of alien concepts which we simply don't come
> across in human languages.
> 
> ** - thankfully, all the languages in the family are closely related.  You
> don't end up with languages as diverse as Welsh, Greek and Swedish.  I
> s'pose the most divergent computer languages are maybe as far apart as
> English and Anglo-Saxon.
> 
> -- 
> David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
> 
>    Educating this luser would be something to frustrate even the
>    unflappable Yoda and make him jam a lightsaber up his arse
>    while screaming "praise evil, the Dark Side is your friend!".
>                               -- Derek Balling, in the Monastery
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Gustafson
                                                    drobnox at visi.com