Wheel-reinvention with Python

[Mike Meyer]

Torsten Bronger <bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> Hallöchen!
> Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> writes:
>> Torsten Bronger <bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
>>> Because such projects attract the greatest number of developers,
>>> many of them being amongst the most diligent developers, too.  I
>>> expect this to have a positive influence of the language.
>> You didn't answer the question about how you define agile
>> project. Please do so if you expect a comment on this.
> Projects with a high Sourceforge activity index.

That doesn't seem to match the common defintion of "agile" when it
comes to programming. Then again, you have a habit of using words to
mean whatever you want, without much reference to how they're used by
the rest of the industry.

>>> Yes, this is what I meant with "legacy code".  C and C++ are
>>> actually special-purpose.  They are good for controlling a
>>> computer but not for implementing an idea.  Their current
>>> vitality on almost all software areas arise from the fact that
>>> they had been extremely successful before Java, C#, and VB came
>>> into play.  Invented today, they would be niche languages.
>> This is patently absurd. C and C++ were born as general-purpose
>> languages. Changing the environment around them isn't going to
>> change that.
> In 1955 people would have told you that Fortran is general-purpose.
> It's not the case any more.

Sorry, but you're wrong. FORTRAN is very much a general purpose
language.  Modern version don't resemble the version from 1955 very
much, but that's true for most languages that are that old.

>>>>> Legacy code is not a sign of success IMO because it implies a
>>>>> difficult future.
>>>> So you're saying that Python, Perl, Linux, the various BSD
>>>> et. al. will have a difficult future? [...]
>>> No.  All I said was that if a language's "success" relies almost
>>> exclusively on the heavy presence of legacy code, its future is
>>> difficult.  I see this for C and C++ excluding VC++.
>> Well, you lumped all C/C++ code a legacy code.
> No because ...

Yes, you did do that. I objected to you doing that, because it isn't
so.

>> You can't have it both ways. Either C/C++ is all legacy code, or
>> it's not.
> ... is wrong in my opinion.  Why should this be?

Because any given proposition is either true or false. The truth may
not be know (or even knowable), but the proposition is still either
true or false.

>> There are *lots* of applications areas that don't need GUIs,
>> and don't run on Windows.
> This becomes a discussion about estimates we both don't know
> exactly, and weight differently, so I'll leave it here.

No, it's not a discussion about estimates. The average household in
a G8 country has more computers that don't run Windows - and in fact
don't have GUIs at all - than otherwise. This is a fact of life.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.