Haskell | Bulldozer00's Blog

Two Opposing Ideas

October 3, 2013 bulldozer00 1 comment

If you didn’t already know it, I’m a fan of the C++ programming language. Of course, not everybody feels the same way. There are many smart people who are among the “haters“.

C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. – Linus Torvalds

When I read anti-C++ tirades like Linus Torvalds’ emotionally charged attack, it always stings a little at first. But then I eventually step back from the “emotional-me” and remember (thanks to the teachings of Byron Katie and Eckart Tolle) that the world will never be the way I “demand!” it to be. The length of time it takes me to disengage from abstract thought-storms like these and return to earth is proportional to how deeply I’m attached to one side of the debate stomping around in my head.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Java creator James Gosling, Haskell‘s Bartosz Milewski, and Go creator Rob Pike are three of the more prominent people in the anti-C++ camp. As expected, they have agendas to promote: advocating their own favorite programming languages at the expense of C++.

Milewski’s rant: “Edward C++Hands“
Pike’s rant: “Less Is Exponentially More“
Gosling’s rant: “The Java Language Environment“

Ironically, these rants by smart and well known people can be construed as tributes to C++. That’s probably why this is one of my favorite Bjarne Stroustrup quotes:

There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody use.

Categories: C++ Tags: Bartosz Milewski, Bjarne Stroustrup, Byron Katie, Haskell, James Gosling, Java, programming, rant, Rob Pike

Procedural, Object-Oriented, Functional

April 3, 2011 bulldozer00 Leave a comment

In this interesting blog post, Dr Dobbs – Whither F#?, Andrew Binstock explores why he thinks “functional” programming hasn’t displaced “object-oriented” programming in the same way that object-oriented programming started slowly displacing “procedural” programming in the nineties. In a nutshell, Andrew thinks that the Return On Investment (ROI) may not be worth the climb:

“F# intrigued a few programmers who kicked the tires and then went back to their regular work. This is rather like what Haskell did a year earlier, when it was the dernier cri on Reddit and other programming community boards before sinking back into its previous status as an unusual curio. The year before that, Erlang underwent much the same cycle.”

“functional programming is just too much of a divergence from regular programming. ”

“it’s the lack of demonstrable benefit for business solutions — which is where most of us live and work. Erlang, which is probably the closest to showing business benefits across a wide swath of business domains, is still a mostly server-side solution. And most server-side developers know and understand the problems they face.”

So, what do you think? What will eventually usurp the object-oriented way of thinking for programmers and designers in the future? The universe is constantly in flux and nothing stays the same, so the status quo loop modeled by option C below will be broken sometime, somewhere, and somehow. No?