18 Oct
2011
18 Oct
'11
5:28 a.m.
From: Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au>
It's important because I like stuff to be small and run fast and to be able
to understand it. I'm an assembler programmer, and I prefer to stay close to
the machine. I don't use HLL except for test drivers but since I can get an
assembler listing and see exactly what the compiler is doing, I get a warm
fuzzy I don't get with JIT or other byte code stuff. I don't like JIT for
many reasons, for one because it's often harder to protect your source
code. I realize on UNIX that shouldn't be an issue but in my world it is.
Hard to teach old dogs new tricks...
Vintage Coder
said:
My inability to identify a good general purpose UNIX programming language
that is compiled to native code
Why is that important? Is JIT good enough? If not, why not? Java has more usable libraries than C++. But you
already ruled out Java.
There's a lot to like about it, obviously, so many libraries and so much
convenience feature. But still it's sort of the opposite of what I've
always done, I don't know if I could jump the gap.
> GUI and SQL would be on top of the list.
It's hard to find a Unix based language that
doesn't cover these.
Oh, good!
You had me at "task before tool" because it
increasingly seems to me that
the challenge is mostly modelling. The typing-in part and getting syntax
right is not a significant burden.
Yes, I think you said that very well. Although I have found there is
something appealing to me about older languages (probably simplicity and
fixed format code and compactness of implementation) that is missing in
newer languages.
The trouble is you are going to get 20 different
answers. However, most
of them will differ mainly in syntactic decoration and not concepts.
You've already rejected a bunch of conceptually more powerful tools
above.
Yeah I realize that, but in a way that's sort of what I wanted (not
rejecting more powerful tools, the 20 answers part!). As I said I would
like to bat around the idea and hear what people like and why they like it.
I don't have enough (any) practical experience with most of the UNIX
languages to know which ones I would like and I haven't had any luck
finding one I do like. So far Ada 95 has been the closest for me, but the
awful library mess is a big inhibitor.
With due respect, it seems you have painted yourself
into a bit of a
corner with arbitrary criteria that seem rooted in what was pragmatic in
1980.
Thanks for your restraint. I know this often becomes a holy war topic and I
have no intention of that, I'm too far outside to be interested in that. I
agree with your assessment, I probably am stuck in the 1980s and from
coding for so long on one platform that I happen to really love for many
reasons, it's hard to go to a new platform.
I suppose I have been trying to apply my view of goodness on my platform
to UNIX and that's obviously not the "when in Rome" approach I probably
*should* be taking. This could take awhile. Don't wait up for me :-)