Closed-source considered harmful (was: JavaScript considered harmful)

[Alex Martelli]

"Karl M. Syring" <syring at email.com> wrote in message
news:a1kfl6$quf8e$1 at ID-7529.news.dfncis.de...
> "Alex Martelli" <aleax at aleax.it> schrieb
> > "Karl M. Syring" <syring at email.com> wrote in message
> > news:a1ibhn$qt4bg$1 at ID-7529.news.dfncis.de...
> >     ...
> > > Once upon a time, there was a company that controlled the hardware and
> the
> > > software market. Although some people say that it induced a statsi of
20
> > > years, it was finally toppled.
> >
> > Interesting -- WHICH "twenty years" were the "stasis"?  Perhaps those
> > which saw the birth and wildfire-like spread of Unix, C, relational
> > database management systems, Pascal, interactive terminals, ... ?-)
>
> I will not engage in alternative history lines, but I think bad languages
> and bad computer architectures have prevailed for a very long time, even
as

Ah yes -- no doubt the emergence of VMS from Digital Equipment, Pascal
from Zurich ETH, Unix and C from AT&T, etc, were all due to that "company
that controlled the hardware and the software market".

> people knew better (*). Of course, the bad language problem has got even
> worse.

Indeed -- today, we're reduced to using Python... oh woe is me!


Alex