November 07, 2007
Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists@gmail.com> wrote in news:fgojbo$2ip8$1 @digitalmars.com:

> BCS wrote:
> Clearly, people are no longer listening to Dijkstra :P

Please relieve me of my ignorance:  What did did Dijkstra say that is being ignored here?

November 07, 2007
JEMandy wrote:
> Please relieve me of my ignorance:  What did did Dijkstra say that is
> being ignored here?

He didn't like the "goto" statement, he considers it bad for programmers
and the programs they wrote... and since Basic is THE "goto"-language
per se. ;-)
November 07, 2007
Sascha Katzner escribió:
> JEMandy wrote:
>> Please relieve me of my ignorance:  What did did Dijkstra say that is
>> being ignored here?
> 
> He didn't like the "goto" statement, he considers it bad for programmers
> and the programs they wrote... and since Basic is THE "goto"-language
> per se. ;-)

Well, if you use D, you are using a compiler which Dijkstra woudln't have liked (the way it is programmed). :-)
November 07, 2007

JEMandy wrote:
> Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists@gmail.com> wrote in news:fgojbo$2ip8$1 @digitalmars.com:
> 
>> BCS wrote:
>> Clearly, people are no longer listening to Dijkstra :P
> 
> Please relieve me of my ignorance:  What did did Dijkstra say that is being ignored here?
> 

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."

 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
November 07, 2007
Daniel Keep wrote:
> "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
> have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
> mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
> 
>  -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

There is surely something to this - but then BASIC in those days was a
completely different language from BASIC today. Todays BASICs are more
like sloppy Pascal dialects. Still bad enough, though.

Regards, Frank
November 07, 2007
BCS wrote:
> It's a informal scoring system, Also while it may not indicate anything it may well generate interest in D.

In other words, it's shallow marketing bullshit.  It's sad to see so much fixation on this in the D community.

-Jeff
November 07, 2007
Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> BCS wrote:
>> It's a informal scoring system, Also while it may not indicate anything it may well generate interest in D.
> 
> In other words, it's shallow marketing bullshit.  It's sad to see so much fixation on this in the D community.

fixation?  Have you noticed that every time the numbers get posted the poster usually uses the phrase "grain of salt"?

Everyone's well aware that it's not a very accurate measure of programming language popularity.  But it is an objective measure.  If you have a better one please do share.

Programming languages live and die by the network effect.  Even if you've got the greatest language in the world, if you're the only one who uses it, it's pretty useless.  TIOBE gives a vague gauge of how much the network effect is working for different languages.  The month-to-month variations of one slot or two up or down are obviously meaningless.  But the fact that D is in the top 20 and has been for a while, and that Scala is not, says something to me.

But you have to take it with a grain of salt.

--bb
November 07, 2007
Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> BCS wrote:
>> It's a informal scoring system, Also while it may not indicate anything it may well generate interest in D.
> 
> In other words, it's shallow marketing bullshit.  It's sad to see so much fixation on this in the D community.
> 
> -Jeff

If marketing is just shallow bullshit, why do people spend billions on it?

TIOBE is fun to watch, even if it doesn't mean anything, and I can use it to market it to my friends and colleagues ("See? Other people are using it, it's rather popular. It's not just a great language with no community."). It makes it more likely that others will use D, which means more open source libraries for me to exploit.

So it may be shallow marketing bullshit, or at least not accurate to any appreciable or useful degree, but it's useful even so.
November 07, 2007
Bill Baxter wrote:
> The month-to-month variations of one slot or two up or down are obviously meaningless.

That's what I mean by fixation.  Here's an example: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/announce/tiobe_D_remains_at_14_but_is_losing_ground_for_the_second_month_8868.html

My impression of the D community is that they consider themselves hard-core engineer types.  I see TIOBE mentioned far too often around here to be consistent with that image.  As somebody who follows D from the outside, it's a negative.

> But the fact that D is in the top 20 and has been for a while, and that Scala is not, says something to me.

I'll grant you that's a positive for D, but what I'm talking about is fixation on TIOBE, not just a general awareness that it has made it into the top 20.  My personal opinion is that if you build a great language and community around it that stuff like TIOBE and the network effect will take care of itself.

-Jeff
November 07, 2007
Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> The month-to-month variations of one slot or two up or down are obviously meaningless.
> 
> That's what I mean by fixation.  Here's an example: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/announce/tiobe_D_remains_at_14_but_is_losing_ground_for_the_second_month_8868.html 
> 
> 
> My impression of the D community is that they consider themselves hard-core engineer types.  I see TIOBE mentioned far too often around here to be consistent with that image.  As somebody who follows D from the outside, it's a negative.
> 
>> But the fact that D is in the top 20 and has been for a while, and that Scala is not, says something to me.
> 
> I'll grant you that's a positive for D, but what I'm talking about is fixation on TIOBE, not just a general awareness that it has made it into the top 20.  My personal opinion is that if you build a great language and community around it that stuff like TIOBE and the network effect will take care of itself.

I don't care enough about TIOBE to ever bother going there of my own initiative, so I'm glad people post the monthly updates here.  Kind of like listening to the stock report.  Day to day doesn't much matter, but it's fun to keep your eye on it.

--bb