Hello Walter,
John Reimer wrote:
Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will distance
people from the language. Show disdain for them, and you are
guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument is.
That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is
reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper
social issues hinted by such a response.
Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the
platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit
PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made
programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers
migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the
"gateway" programming platform.
Good point. I remember the DOS days well. Interestingly, though, "Unix"
didn't really lose out in the long run. A few years later, the movement
returned in the form of Linux. And then those "Real" programmers apparently
had a chance to express their disdain again. :-)
All I know is that, as a teenager, I used to chafe over the limitations of
16-bit DOS when my computer was clearly 32-bit capable, and I was greatly
urked at the strength of the industry that kept it so. That is what caused
me to track down one of the first Slackware linux releases (pre 1.0). I
just couldn't stand wasting my computer's potential. :-)
As it so happened, each path experienced success in completely different
ways and different times, while other paths were lost forever. But, in line
with the reasoning not to disdain different opportunities for D, adopting
technologies in different paths also makes sense in the interest of "diversifying
to reduce risk." It works for computer languages too. :)
-JJR
