On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 03:30:06AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > . . . and I wouldn't use C or Fortran for certain classes of complex
> > application programming, either.
> There are a lot of things I wouldn't use Fortran for, although when it
> was the only high-level language my colleagues were used to, I did. :)
> But despite its original intent as a systems programming language, I
> can't think of a single application I wouldn't write in C if that's what
> I was paid to do.

Hell, pay me enough, and I'll write your word processor web application
in assembly.  This discussion is, I thought, about what languages make
sense to use for a given task -- not whether you'd be willing to do
awful drudgery for beaucoup bucks.

> 
> > I wouldn't use Java at all, if I could help it, but that's another
> > story.
> Well ... I liked Java at one time well enough to choose it over the
> protestations of management for a project ... as an excuse to learn the
> language. I find Ruby to be a happy blend of all that's good in Java
> (objects, classes, methods, garbage collection) and Perl (regular
> expressions, system administration primitives built in, arrays and
> hashes, simplified syntax), with a few other nice touches of its own
> (lambdas, continuations, open classes).

Perl does garbage collection via reference counting, and does it
exceedingly well.  Most languages these days do objects, classes, and
methods (Perl included).  I find the way Java does most of this stuff to
be pretty odious, personally.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary
to shoot the engineers and begin production." - MacUser, November 1990