Big languages, little languages, room for all (was: tabs do WHAT?)

[Cameron Laird]

In article <86k78t$thg at newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>,
Richard Brodie <R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>"Thomas Hamelryck" <thamelry at vub.ac.be> wrote in message news:86joac$l2s$1 at mach.vub.ac.be...
>
>> BTW, people here seem to have adopted the idea that if you don't like
>> a particular feature of a language, you should abandon it (e.g., "You
>> don't like indentation? Use Perl!").
>
>Adding features to a language always seems easy but that is the best
>reason for not doing so. There is the temptation to make the language
>the union of all the desired features. It's all been talked around before,
>and Guido has said what his feelings are. In the end, I think you've
>either got to respect that decision, or fork the language.
>
>> You can find a very nice description of this process with respect to C++
>> in "The Evolution of C++ : Language Design in the Marketplace of Ideas",
>> by Jim Waldo (Editor), James Waldo (Editor).
>
>C++ has to be the classic case of a language that evolved rather than
>was designed: PDP-11 assembler with OO bits tacked on. If we can
>learn something from its evolution, it should be not to do the same
>again.
>
>'Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.' - King Lear
>
>
Some embrace madness, and wisely.

I think it's my turn this month to argue for there being
more than one way to do things in more than one way.  I
happen to agree that Python is good at being clean,
comprehensible, more-minimal-than-maximal, conservative
in its core, and so on.  C++ certainly has problems; I
happen to believe, though, that it's OK for it to be an
evolved-rather-than-designed monster, that there's a
place for such committee work, and that our discipline
might even correctly generate such devil spawn again
(don't kid yourself about Java's coherence).  I'm just
thankful that Guido has fulfilled *his* vision so
expertly.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html