🚀 go-pugleaf

Doug Bell wrote:
> 
> In article <goochb.327.000893D1@rwi.com>, goochb@rwi.com (William D.
> Gooch) wrote:
> > The now-familiar windowing paradigm of PCs and Macs originated
> > in the Lisp/Smalltalk world long before Apple or Microsoft co-opted it.
> 
> Now this is an example of what I think have been some of the best
> contributions made by the programming languages of the
> intelligentsia--exploring new ways of doing things and proving concepts.
> It's just that for whatever reason, the realization of the worthwhile
> concepts usually falls to a work-horse language.

Would you consider VisualBasic to be a workhorse language?  Are there
or are there not many useful programs written in VisualBasic that
are widely-used?

What are the properties of Smalltalk, Java, CLOS, Scheme, Sather, Python,
Obliq, ML, etc. that make them unsuitable to be workhorse languages--that 
VisualBasic does not also have?

There are valid reasons why Smalltalk (or other advanced languages) may not be 
a good choice for many projects.  But the reason a language such as Smalltalk
is not used in most cases has more to do with prejudice, ignorance, politics,
inertia and the tendency to copy what others are doing than it does with the 
technical merits of Smalltalk or the requirements of the project.

> > BTW, I'm not claiming that any language has "all the answers," and
> > I don't think anyone else made that claim either.
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > William D. Gooch--RothWell International
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Let's just say that to some extent, the answers a language *does* have
> must be relative to the impact of the software which results from it.
> What other measure would you apply?
> 
> Doug Bell
> dbell@shvn.com

I would say that the impact of the software implemented in a language
is the **intersection** (NOT the **union**) of the power of the language, 
the talent of those using it, and the assignments that the language gets 
dealt by the market.  Once one tool achieves dominance, it is very difficult
for other incompatible tools to become widely used--regardless of relative
merit (e.g., Windows, x86, S360/370, gasoline, chinese ideographs, etc).
So very good tools can have relatively small impact--because they don't
get used. 

Example: one could use modern linguistic science to design a much better
language than English or any other natural language.  Aren't you excited
by the prospect of using such a language?  I know, you just can't wait
to learn and start using this language.  Right?

--Alan