Rue the day...

[dman]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 09:22:28PM +0000, Donn Cave wrote:
| Quoth Steve Arnold <sarnold at arnolds.dhs.org>:
| ...
| | In a sense, a language is just another tool (albeit, a rather
| | important one) and you should generally choose the right tool for
| | the right job.  The practical answer to this is dependent on both
| | the tools the programmer is familiar with, and the project 
| | requirements.
| ...
| | However, I have seen too many projects (most of them in the millions 
| | of $'s range) have trouble because of a poor choice in languages and 
| | tools (and lack of SE knowledge, no process, etc, etc).  This 
| | happens mostly because some management dweeb only hears industry 
| | hype and propaganda (can you say Java?), and many programmers seem 
| | actually afraid of learning another language.  IMHO, a competent 
| | programmer (and any software engineer) should not care if he/she 
| | already knows a particular language or not.  They should be good at 
| | what they do regardless.
| 
| Note an apparent contradiction at the first clip point and the second.
| At first, which tools the programmer is familiar with does matter, then
| later he or she shouldn't care.  Which is it?

Both.  First, if you aren't familiar with a tool it will be difficult
to use it (at first, anyways).  Though when you know several tools,
exactly which tool is used is less important.

-D

-- 

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us.
        I John 1:8