On 2010-11-22 11:25:34 -0500, scattered said:
And you don't think that [JH] could write a book about Haskell
if he honestly came to think that it were a superior all-aroung
language?
Until he actually does, he has a financial interest in trash-talking
Haskell. This makes anything he says about Haskell suspect.
The fact that he *didn't* mindlessly reject [musical note lang] in favor of
[Irish Ship Of The Desert] when [musical note lang] came out (despite
the fact that at the time his company
was deeply (exclusively?) invested in [Irish Ship Of The Desert] and
arguably had a vested
interest in having [musical note lang] fail to gain support) suggests
that he is able
to fairly evaluate the merits of other languages.
No, it suggests that he saw that supporting the Irish Ship Of The
Desert meant going up against Microsoft, so he jumped to the MS
supported variant of the Donut Dromedary.
You miss the fundamental point; having a financial interest in the
outcome of a debate makes anything that person says an advertisement
for his financial interests, not a fair assessment.
Doubtless he has
biases, but there is no reason to think that they are any greater than
the bias of any programmer who has invested substantial amounts of
time in becoming fluent in a particular language.
Just the opposite. A person who makes his living by being paid to
program in a language he has developed some expertise in (rather than
selling books on it and training for it) has no financial interest in
seeing others develop expertise in it - they would just represent
competition. By contrast, one who sells training and books for a
language profits directly when others take an interest in that
language. Their financial interests are in fact opposite.
JH profits when people take an interest in languages he sells training
for; a working lisp programmer sees additional *competition* when
someone else develops expertise in common lisp.
But an advocate isn't a judge. Nobody is handing down binding
decisions here - they are just advocating their positions.
Now you're arguing our point; JH is an *advocate* with a clear conflict
of interest which prevents him from presenting anything but the most
one sided, and therefore largely useless, assessment. His writing
should be seen as a paid advertisement, not as a fair treatment of
programming languages.
warmest regards,
Ralph
--
Raffael Cavallaro
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
