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To: AnotherUnixGeek

One of the problems I see in “keeping up to date” in software is that much of what is recently deemed as “progress” is nothing more than some PhD candidate’s re-hash of stuff we had before.

How many languages used today could we eliminate... if we just told the people who whined about the non-C/C++ syntax of Lisp and Smalltalk to STFU and get to work? It appears to my curmudgeonly eyes that most modern interpreted languages are just as re-hash of Lisp or ST-80.

Further, none of the “innovations” in software recently are addressing the most expensive and embarrassing elephant in the room: Security, and by extension, reliability. Everyone wants to address issues like rapid deployment, reusability, etc, but no one wants to address security from the metal upwards - at least, no one has since MULTICS.

I agree that keeping one’s skills up to date is a necessary part of being a professional. However, in software, I assert that much of this effort is being sunk into bottomless pits of irrelevance.


20 posted on 04/28/2012 3:41:05 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: NVDave
It appears to my curmudgeonly eyes that most modern interpreted languages are just as re-hash of Lisp or ST-80.

Compiled ones, too. You may have heard of Greenspun's Tenth Rule:

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

25 posted on 04/28/2012 5:49:39 PM PDT by cynwoody
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To: NVDave

I believe it was C.A.R. (Tony) Hoare who once said,

“Algol was a significant improvement over most of its successors.”


26 posted on 04/28/2012 6:08:19 PM PDT by Erasmus (BHO: New supreme leader of the homey rollin' empire.)
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