From: Charles Shannon Hendrix Date: 2002-08-23T05:36:40+09:00 Subject: Re: A Repeat: New Language After Ruby? Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote: >Bertrand Meyer writes about it in OOSC: > >----- > In addition, the language is straightforward and includes very little >else than direct support for the method. First-year students using it >have commented that it was "no language at all" --- meaning that the >notation is in one-to-one correspondence with the method: to learn one >is to learn the other, and there is scant extra linguistic decoration on >top of the concepts. (...) > > Well, it's his baby... I personally found it a little hard to deal with. However, I have to admit that much of the problem with learning new languages is that we as an industry/science don't do the right thing with regard to creating portable environments for languages to live in. I hate Java, but I can write GUI code that will (almost) work everywhere. Perl has some thorns too, but again, it generally works everywhere and has tremendous support. Learning a language like Eiffel, Scheme, ocaml, or Objective C, all of which I find better than mainstream languages like Java and C++, means often finding yourself isolated. That, and the fact that a lot of employers force you to be buzzword compliant. >learn more by doing a complete paradigm shift rather than staying on the >OO side. > I have always felt that OO solves problems that some languages never really had. Also, I believe that every problem is best expressed in terms of objects. I find a lot of OO solutions very obtuse and difficult compared to the simpler algol-like algorithms in non OO languages. It depends on what you are doing. I guess I want to see a language that is more successful at being the best of both worlds. >Maybe I'm too biased towards _learning_ instead of _actually working_ >but that's because I am still a student :-) > I used to be where you are, but now I generally have to feel like a language will help me get work done before I can spend time on it.