Hello Nick,
"John Reimer" <terminal.n...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:28b70f8c104198cb3624a1d43...@news.digitalmars.com...
Hello Nick,
"Walter Bright" <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote in message
news:gj519n$1ck...@digitalmars.com...
I've run into a lot of programmers lately who, if a language isn't
on .NET, will not look at it.
This right here is absolute proof of how appallingly pathetic the
average quality of programmers is, and just how firmly up their
asses their heads are planted. As much of a need as we have for
better languages, I'm convinced that need is completely dwarfed by
the need for better programmers.
And frankly, I'm not so sure that such clearly incompetent fools
should be encouraged in such tenancies. I say, if someone is so
bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid
reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar
languages. They's the only thing that will lead to their demise. We
need to save our field from these f****** morons, not encourage
them.
(And no, I'm not complaining about .NET itself, or .NET languages.)
Hey, Nick, you just snubbed a whole bunch of people and severed all
hope of demonstrating D's usefulness to anyone. ;) I'm guessing a
lot of us here have acted the "morons" in various similar ways when
we make a weak attempt at argument when things are pushed at us.
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.
Incidentally, labelling them "incompetant fools" isn't a very strong
argument anyway, but you know that. ;D
I say, if someone is so
bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid
reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar
languages.
You probably realize this, but it's rarely so simple as that.
Sometimes people make weak silly arguments in response to people
pushing things on them. Their reasons for holding onto a technology
rather than exploring other possibilities may be more related to
survival and livelihood than sound reason (well, then again, survival
and livelihood may be very good "reason" :-) ). Their argument for
rejection may be just a weak form of saying "go away... life is
hard... don't bother me with this stuff." Even so, there is a sort
of logic contained in their response: make D viable on the platform
they know brings in the money, and you may just get their attention.
There are a whole lot of people that aren't risk-takers for very good
reason; the D community just seems to have attracted the more
maverick adventurous personalities: we probably look like a bunch of
extreme sports fanatics from their perspective :). Just because
others give lame responses to why they won't explore a new language,
doesn't mean they are all losers. I expect that others might
consider us to be morons for wasting so much time on D.
I was a bit unclear. Walter's observation just triggered a certain
nerve. I'll attempt to clarify:
I've personally come across a lot of truly terrible "programmers".
Refusing to touch a language because it isn't .NET, or because it *is*
.NET and thus related to MS, or because it isn't Java (and no I don't
mean JVM), etc. is just one of many classes of fallacies I've seen
over and over and over among these people. No, that in and of itself
doesn't make them "incompetant fools" (go figure, the one time I
decide to skip the spell check ;)), and there may very well be a few
people who actually do have a rare good reason to stick with .NET.
But, such "fanboyism" is often fairly indicative of a "fool".
And yes, I really do think it would be best for everyone, developers,
consumers, and even the fools themselves, if these people were weeded
out of the field. Thus, the idea of bowing to a fallacy merely because
it's a popular one truly disgusts me. It should be classified as a
"reason not to", not a "reason to". (But overall, I would count adding
.NET as a target for D as a "good thing" (although not a personal
priority) because one of the "pie in the sky" things I've been
dreaming to see in the programming world (besides overall better
programmers) is a complete divorce of language and platform.)
Fair enough. And it may be that you get to see some trully nauseating stuff
that I'm not in contact with, in which case I have no argument. :)
Thanks for clarifying.
-JJR
