Website message overhaul

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote in message 
news:jaafb1$1u20$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Am 19.11.2011 21:22, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
>>
>> Well, the vast majority of the time I come across a slow, bloated app, 
>> it's
>> from a VM or otherwise dymanic language. The vast majority of the time I
>> come across a lean, zippy app, it's from something like C/C++/D/etc.
>> Whatever the exact reasons, the former group of langauges tends to lean
>> towards inefficient approaches, and the latter group tends to lean 
>> towards
>> more efficient approaches. (I try to avoid calling the things like
>> C#/Ruby/Java/etc high-level, since I consider D to be just as high-level, 
>> if
>> not more - it's just that D is *also* more low-level, too)
>
> Sure you are right, but that is because most developers nowadays don't 
> learn properly how to code.
>

I still think there's more to it than just that, but I do share your 
pessimism on the quality of most programmers.

> In my line of work, one of the reasons why we make static analysis tools
> part of the build process is to force developers to code properly.
>
> Sometimes I ask myself what some of our developers were doing at the 
> university.
>

I would never trust a programmer whose only experience is classroom and 
homework. Luckily though, programming is one of those things you can get 
real non-school experience in without actually being employed in the field. 
(Many other fields have a chicken-and-egg problem in that regard.)

>>
>> Interesting point. Although, it is a balancing act: From what I hear, JVM 
>> is
>> considered to have a top-notch GC (no doubt due in part to it's lack of
>> low-level ability), but I bet you'd be hard-pressed to get our
>> reinterpret-cast-Foo example or codecs/filter/rasterizers/etc (assuming 
>> you
>> actually wanted to ;)) to run as fast in Java as in D.
>>
>
> That is the reason I tend to favour polyglot programming. As a possible 
> example, I would rather write the majority of the application in Java and 
> leave the codec implemented in C, while calling it via JNI.
>

See, I've never really been a fan of that style. Yea, it's a good thing to 
do when necessary, but I always favor using a more general-purpose langauge 
(big part of what drew me to D) than constantly switching langauges, or 
ending up in a language-soup project. I find polyglot programming to be a 
big pain. That way you have to deal with things like interop, and mentally 
switching gears to the other langauge (that's a fairly high-overhead context 
switch).

> This is how we code most applications in my line of work.
>

I don't know what line of work you're in, but I do a lot of web stuff and 
it's the same thing here. That's one of the many things I dislike about web 
dev: Can't do anything without swapping between twenty different lanaguges.

> Anyway, this was the reason I was against referrin to C# in the language 
> slogan. If you start comparing against other languages, in the eyes of the 
> receiver you already lost, most time.
>
> Surely you need to compare, but that comes afterwards after the person
> has got some interest to find more about the language.