[Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market
On Sun, 27 Jan 2008, Bulat Ziganshin wrote: > Hello Hans, > > Sunday, January 27, 2008, 5:02:57 PM, you wrote: > > > This reminds me, I worked at a Dutch telecomm software production > > company for a short while in 1999 and they had two Russian software > > engineers there, one from St. Petersburg and one from Wladiwostok, both > > female and under 25 years of age. They programmed in C and were highly > > respected by their managers and colleagues! So, there are at least > > counterexamples :-) > > no. you should asked them HOW they learned programming and i'm pretty > sure (knowing too much about our universities and institutes) that > they were just a self-learned - like myself. generally speaking, our > higher education now just starting to teach students "new" Java > technologies - you can imagine how old is knowledge they get there. > actually, all the good russian programmers i ever seen are > self-learned Many things I need today for math and computer science I have acquired in an auto-didactic way. These are usually the things I can remember most easily. Isn't it a good education system if it allows, or supports, or encourages or forces you to learn this way? :-) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market
G'day all. Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Algol is dead. No sense in disputing it. And yet Delphi is still alive. So is Modula-3, though it tends to be referred to as "Java" these days. And, of course, Haskell is ensuring that Miranda will never really die. Cheers, Andrew Bromage ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market
Derek Elkins writes: //Discussion about Lisp in Russia, some people not getting younger, Scheme with types, and other bedlam// No language that was ever "popular" has ever died as far as I can tell. This is one of the persistent "truths" which has to be carefully interpreted. Languages mutate and give offsprings, bearing sometimes the same name. The original Fortran is undoubtly dead and buried. Long live Fortran! In some cases people defend this thesis with sophism. Algol is dead. No sense in disputing it. So what? It simply was never "popular enough"... Since the Nature abhorrs vacuum, all niches tend to become non-empty, and for any language, there will be some guys who will play with it. Snobol is alive, APL as well. Perhaps even Simula. When can we say that it is *really* dead? How many users? Languages are "alive" when people who used them are alive, and we didn't have had time enough to kill all of them, patriarchs... Look, Simon Peyton Jones was born more or less simultaneously with Fortran. And he is not so terribly old, is he? (Welll, perhaps for some of you, but not for me.) Anyway, a language, as any other conceptual structure, can be stored and communicated. You may kill all the "working instances", and rekindle it later. It such a way it is difficult to kill a religion, or a political doctrine. But it may die, become useless/unused temporarily. So, you never really know... Jerzy Karczmarczuk ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market (was Re: Why functional programming matters
Hello Stefan, Sunday, January 27, 2008, 1:14:46 AM, you wrote: > But historically, computers have been available at all kinds of price > ranges, so people chose the price point that fit them. So, for the last > 15 years or so already computers have been chosen (in the wealthy > countries) to be cheaper than programmers. > Is there any reason to think that the same forces aren't at play in > lower-income nations? After all, cheap (typically second hand) > computers are easy to come by. what you mean by cheap computer? one which can't run modern software at all, smth like first IBM PC? :) in poor countries there is not just second-hand computers because local sources doesn't exist (in order to have 100k of second-hand computers people should buy the same 100k new computers a few years ago), and global import of second-hand computers is non-existant -- Best regards, Bulatmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market (was Re: Why functional programming matters
On 1/26/08, Stefan Monnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> * Say "computers are cheap but programmers are expensive" whenever > >> explaining a correctness or productivity feature. > > This is true only if talking to people in high-income nations. > > Is it? Maybe you're right. > Yes -- consider the OLPC project (and its competitors). In some developing nations, $200 for a laptop is still a *lot* to pay (the laptop I'm typing this on cost $1400, purchased on a government grant, and that purchase was treated as nothing.) Labor is a lot cheaper in those places. And there's not much in the way of big government funding (whether for universities or companies) to pay for any of it. > But historically, computers have been available at all kinds of price > ranges, so people chose the price point that fit them. So, for the last > 15 years or so already computers have been chosen (in the wealthy > countries) to be cheaper than programmers. > > Is there any reason to think that the same forces aren't at play in > lower-income nations? After all, cheap (typically second hand) > computers are easy to come by. Not with the same amount of computing power that computers that run modern application tend to have; a lot of places don't even have reliable *electricity* (so in that case, lots of people and limited machines could be *good*, if the machines aren't working all the time), etc. I don't really know enough to give a more complete answer to your question. But my original point is that saying labor is always expensive and hardware is always cheap by comparison is a culturally biased statement, at least right now, on January 26, 2008. Cheers, Tim -- Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt "I eat too much / I laugh too long / I like too much of you when I'm gone." -- Ani DiFranco ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market (was Re: Why functional programming matters
>> * Say "computers are cheap but programmers are expensive" whenever >> explaining a correctness or productivity feature. > This is true only if talking to people in high-income nations. Is it? Maybe you're right. But historically, computers have been available at all kinds of price ranges, so people chose the price point that fit them. So, for the last 15 years or so already computers have been chosen (in the wealthy countries) to be cheaper than programmers. Is there any reason to think that the same forces aren't at play in lower-income nations? After all, cheap (typically second hand) computers are easy to come by. Stefan ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: The programming language market
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Tim Chevalier/Paul Johnson about "cheap computers, expensive programmers" > >>> > This is true only if talking to people in high-income nations. >>> > >>> Even in low-income nations, its only false in the short term. If you >>> have skilled programmers with computers and Internet connections then >>> their wages inflate to the world norm. IIRC India is seeing 20%/year >>> wage inflation... > >> It's true that India seems to be going in that direction, but >> personally I don't feel I have the background or temerity to suggest >> that it will definitely happen for the rest of the world. > > The issue is less related to the actual income, but to the global politics, > sometimes doctrinal. Not always the "invisible hand" of market may easily > change things, and if a given nation/country has historical strong views > on the "power of the people", the evolution is different than at your place. > India doesn't seem to boast that they are numerous and powerful. Chinese > do... We shall see. > > You may perhaps remember (which you won't, because you are too young) the > glorious times when computers became a reality even in Soviet Union. They > had at that time plenty of really good mathematicians. But the totalitarian > view of the science, plus the nationalistic proudness, made them (the rulers > not the scientists...) think and say that with so many good people, there > is no need to develop the programming automated tools. > > They neglected the programming languages. Russia and their satellites became > a kind of desert here not only because of economical problems... Not wishing to refute your general point, I can only note that U.S.S.R did have its own school of computer science in general, and of developing programming language implementations in particular. There were Fortran and Algol compilers, there is Refal, after all, which is a purely Soviet invention (and which, for that matter, is still being taught in several Russian universities). So in this particular respect you are definitely wrong. -- S. Y. A(R). A. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
