From: Rick DeNatale Date: 2008-06-03T00:07:33+09:00 Subject: Re: The duck's backside ------=_Part_28001_24786408.1212419285977 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 9:05 AM, David A. Black wrote: > I took an extended look at Eiffel 10 or 12 years ago, and thought it > was very cool, in ways that are almost diametrically opposed to Ruby's > coolness, of course. I've always thought Eiffel would be a good > alternate name for Ruby, though, because apparently the Eiffel tower > is lighter than the cylinder of air that contains it (!) and I think > of Ruby as having that quality of more power than can be accounted for > by what you actually see. (Or something.) But it's also a good name > for Eiffel, for other reasons. A little less than 18 years ago, I chaired an OOPSLA panel called "OOP in the Real World" http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=97946.97981 One of the panelists was Burton Leathers from Cognos. He gave a characterization of the popular OO languages at that time based on their "origin." As I remember some of the highlights were: Objective-C reflects it's Yankee origins (It was originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love at an ITT lab in Connecticut), it does just what it has to do and nothing more. C++ is like Hagen-Dazs ice cream, you think it's from Scandanavia, but it's really an industrial product from New Jersey. As I recall he said he hadn't really used Smalltalk (which comes from California) but he got the impression that if he did it would be like surfing in baggie shorts. And his description of Eiffel, "Quintessentially French!" I think that there were a few more, but I can't recall them. Neither Java nor Ruby were on the radar in 1990. Java (actually Oak) wasn't planted until 1991, and Ruby didn't appear until 1993. I wonder who Burton would have characterized them. -- Rick DeNatale My blog on Ruby http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/ ------=_Part_28001_24786408.1212419285977--