From: Andrew Hunt <andy@...>
Date: 2000-06-18T22:29:41-04:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:03509] Re: Static Typing

    >>    >>"Thaddeus L. Olczyk" wrote:
    >>    >>> Considering the heaps of praise Eiffel has recieved
    >>    >>> from the OO community I would suspect that most feel it has benefit.
    >>
    >>I personally like Eiffel.  I think it has great benefits.  But
    >>while everyone praises it, no one uses it.  Why is that?  Is
    >>it more academically correct and not as convenient as it could be?
    >>
    >Come on. You know. Everyone knows.
    >The reason that I've never given Eiffel more a perfunctory glance,
    >is the same reason that few people use it.  Bertrand Meyer is a 
    >!@#$(*& asshole. He sorounds himself with a bucn of sycophants
    >who are assholes too. A lot of people just get disgusted and  go away.

I don't think personal attacks are appropriate, nor do I 
think that the language creator's personality can be entirely
to blame for the acceptance (or lack therof) of a language.

Your description could easily apply to Bill Gates as well, yet
that doesn't seem to have affected his market share in the least.

    >Yep. I've seen that too. Look at the programmers that did it, and they
    >generally didn't know C++, though they thought they did.

I've met quite a few folks like this.  C++ is a complex language,
and many novices do not appreciate the hairy mess that they 
inadvertantly create. 

    >Yeah, after two months
    >you barely learn the first Chapter of the manual. No wonder they went
    >broke.

By the same token, if you had a language you *could* learn in
two months, wouldn't these guys have been better off?

/\ndy