Walter Bright wrote:
> John Reimer wrote:
>> Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will distance people from the language.  Show disdain for them, and you are guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument is.  That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper social issues hinted by such a response.
> 
> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the "gateway" programming platform.

Yah but due to other factors than its technical qualities. Leaving those out of the story puts things in an odd light.

Andrei

"John Reimer" <terminal.node@gmail.com> wrote in message news:28b70f8c104198cb3624a1d43670@news.digitalmars.com...
> Hello Nick,
>
>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:gj519n$1ckg$1@digitalmars.com...
>>
>>> I've run into a lot of programmers lately who, if a language isn't on .NET, will not look at it.
>>>
>> This right here is absolute proof of how appallingly pathetic the average quality of programmers is, and just how firmly up their asses their heads are planted. As much of a need as we have for better languages, I'm convinced that need is completely dwarfed by the need for better programmers.
>>
>> And frankly, I'm not so sure that such clearly incompetent fools should be encouraged in such tenancies. I say, if someone is so bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar languages. They's the only thing that will lead to their demise. We need to save our field from these f****** morons, not encourage them.
>>
>> (And no, I'm not complaining about .NET itself, or .NET languages.)
>>
>
>
> Hey, Nick, you just snubbed a whole bunch of people and severed all hope of demonstrating D's usefulness to anyone. ;)  I'm guessing a lot of us here have acted the "morons" in various similar ways when we make a weak attempt at argument when things are pushed at us.
>
>
> Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will distance people from the language.  Show disdain for them, and you are guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument is.  That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper social issues hinted by such a response.
>
>
> Incidentally, labelling them "incompetant fools" isn't a very strong argument anyway, but you know that. ;D
>
>
>> I say, if someone is so
>> bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid
>> reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar
>> languages.
>
>
> You probably realize this, but it's rarely so simple as that.  Sometimes people make weak silly arguments in response to people pushing things on them.  Their reasons for holding onto a technology rather than exploring other possibilities may be more related to survival and livelihood than sound reason (well, then again, survival and livelihood may be very good "reason" :-) ).  Their argument for rejection may be just a weak form of saying "go away... life is hard... don't bother me with this stuff."  Even so, there is a sort of logic contained in their response:  make D viable on the platform they know brings in the money, and you may just get their attention.
>
> There are a whole lot of people that aren't risk-takers for very good reason; the D community just seems to have attracted the more maverick adventurous personalities: we probably look like a bunch of extreme sports fanatics from their perspective  :).  Just because others give lame responses to why they won't explore a new language, doesn't mean they are all losers.  I expect that others might consider us to be morons for wasting so much time on D.
>

 I was a bit unclear. Walter's observation just triggered a certain nerve.
I'll attempt to clarify:

I've personally come across a lot of truly terrible "programmers". Refusing to touch a language because it isn't .NET, or because it *is* .NET and thus related to MS, or because it isn't Java (and no I don't mean JVM), etc. is just one of many classes of fallacies I've seen over and over and over among these people. No, that in and of itself doesn't make them "incompetant fools" (go figure, the one time I decide to skip the spell check ;)), and there may very well be a few people who actually do have a rare good reason to stick with .NET. But, such "fanboyism" is often fairly indicative of a "fool".

And yes, I really do think it would be best for everyone, developers, consumers, and even the fools themselves, if these people were weeded out of the field. Thus, the idea of bowing to a fallacy merely because it's a popular one truly disgusts me. It should be classified as a "reason not to", not a "reason to". (But overall, I would count adding .NET as a target for D as a "good thing" (although not a personal priority) because one of the "pie in the sky" things I've been dreaming to see in the programming world (besides overall better programmers) is a complete divorce of language and platform.)

Hello Andrei,

> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> John Reimer wrote:
>> 
>>> Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will
>>> distance people from the language.  Show disdain for them, and you
>>> are guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument
>>> is.  That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is
>>> reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper
>>> social issues hinted by such a response.
>>> 
>> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the
>> platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit
>> PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made
>> programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers
>> migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the
>> "gateway" programming platform.
>> 
> Yah but due to other factors than its technical qualities. Leaving
> those out of the story puts things in an odd light.
> 
> Andrei
> 


He he... that's one reason the polarization effect remains so intact.  Our point of view tends to hold a lot of sway on our interpretation of events. :)  I understood what Walter was getting at, though.... just that the disdain really didn't accomplish anything.


If I allowed myself, I could easily be caught up in discussing why the popularity of DOS was one of the greatest handicaps of the era... but such an opinion is bound to clash with those those that made their living from it (Hi, Walter :D ) Granted, my point of view, would have been from the perspective of the consumer... and one who, as a teenager, had no investment in it commercially. However, the motivation behind Linux development and use was probably hugely influenced by the industries' rigid hold on DOS 16-bit.... so we probably have DOS (and win 3.1, win 95/98) to thank for Linux's growing popularity.


It seems that influencing an industry to steer it in any one direction is usually impossible except by the corporations most involved.  This is one area where Linux (and opensource in general) has been so effective because it forced the industry giants to maneuver away from their intended path. I don't think Linux would be what it was without the effects of the commercial side of things... nor would commercial OSes be what they are without open source being a competitive element.  So I've come to appreciate the influence of both, even though I don't particularly care for some of the elements of either.


I don't support the idea of D on .NET because I think it's the best thing around... I do so because I think it has a place in the grand scheme of things, something that D might do well to be part of. :)


-JJR

Hello Nick,

> "John Reimer" <terminal.node@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:28b70f8c104198cb3624a1d43670@news.digitalmars.com...
> 
>> Hello Nick,
>> 
>>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message
>>> news:gj519n$1ckg$1@digitalmars.com...
>>> 
>>>> I've run into a lot of programmers lately who, if a language isn't
>>>> on .NET, will not look at it.
>>>> 
>>> This right here is absolute proof of how appallingly pathetic the
>>> average quality of programmers is, and just how firmly up their
>>> asses their heads are planted. As much of a need as we have for
>>> better languages, I'm convinced that need is completely dwarfed by
>>> the need for better programmers.
>>> 
>>> And frankly, I'm not so sure that such clearly incompetent fools
>>> should be encouraged in such tenancies. I say, if someone is so
>>> bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid
>>> reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar
>>> languages. They's the only thing that will lead to their demise. We
>>> need to save our field from these f****** morons, not encourage
>>> them.
>>> 
>>> (And no, I'm not complaining about .NET itself, or .NET languages.)
>>> 
>> Hey, Nick, you just snubbed a whole bunch of people and severed all
>> hope of demonstrating D's usefulness to anyone. ;)  I'm guessing a
>> lot of us here have acted the "morons" in various similar ways when
>> we make a weak attempt at argument when things are pushed at us.
>> 
>> Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will distance
>> people from the language.  Show disdain for them, and you are
>> guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument is.
>> That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is
>> reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper
>> social issues hinted by such a response.
>> 
>> Incidentally, labelling them "incompetant fools" isn't a very strong
>> argument anyway, but you know that. ;D
>> 
>>> I say, if someone is so
>>> bone-headed as to refuse to look at a language for such a stupid
>>> reason, they *should* be forced to stick with increasingly subpar
>>> languages.
>> You probably realize this, but it's rarely so simple as that.
>> Sometimes people make weak silly arguments in response to people
>> pushing things on them.  Their reasons for holding onto a technology
>> rather than exploring other possibilities may be more related to
>> survival and livelihood than sound reason (well, then again, survival
>> and livelihood may be very good "reason" :-) ).  Their argument for
>> rejection may be just a weak form of saying "go away... life is
>> hard... don't bother me with this stuff."  Even so, there is a sort
>> of logic contained in their response:  make D viable on the platform
>> they know brings in the money, and you may just get their attention.
>> 
>> There are a whole lot of people that aren't risk-takers for very good
>> reason; the D community just seems to have attracted the more
>> maverick adventurous personalities: we probably look like a bunch of
>> extreme sports fanatics from their perspective  :).  Just because
>> others give lame responses to why they won't explore a new language,
>> doesn't mean they are all losers.  I expect that others might
>> consider us to be morons for wasting so much time on D.
>> 
> I was a bit unclear. Walter's observation just triggered a certain
> nerve. I'll attempt to clarify:
> 
> I've personally come across a lot of truly terrible "programmers".
> Refusing to touch a language because it isn't .NET, or because it *is*
> .NET and thus related to MS, or because it isn't Java (and no I don't
> mean JVM), etc. is just one of many classes of fallacies I've seen
> over and over and over among these people. No, that in and of itself
> doesn't make them "incompetant fools" (go figure, the one time I
> decide to skip the spell check ;)), and there may very well be a few
> people who actually do have a rare good reason to stick with .NET.
> But, such "fanboyism" is often fairly indicative of a "fool".
> 
> And yes, I really do think it would be best for everyone, developers,
> consumers, and even the fools themselves, if these people were weeded
> out of the field. Thus, the idea of bowing to a fallacy merely because
> it's a popular one truly disgusts me. It should be classified as a
> "reason not to", not a "reason to". (But overall, I would count adding
> .NET as a target for D as a "good thing" (although not a personal
> priority) because one of the "pie in the sky" things I've been
> dreaming to see in the programming world (besides overall better
> programmers) is a complete divorce of language and platform.)
> 


Fair enough.  And it may be that you get to see some trully nauseating stuff that I'm not in contact with, in which case I have no argument. :)

Thanks for clarifying.

-JJR

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the "gateway" programming platform.
> 
> Yah but due to other factors than its technical qualities. Leaving those out of the story puts things in an odd light.

It looks primitive these days, of course, but at the time it hit the sweet spot of max technology for minimal price. The performance/cost was the best available.

On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:57:40 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the "gateway" programming platform.

In my world, the "real" programmers were working on IBM mainframes and the like. The new-fangled "mini"-computers (Olivetti, Xerox, Sun) were starting to make their way in to commercial operations and these were seen as under-achieving toys by the "real" programmers.

I was just about to recommend the IBM Model-23 mini-computer/word-processor to my bosses when news of the IBM PC broke. I was given a preview and demonstration of the new PC when I visited the IBM offices about 3-months before the official release by the very enthusiastic, and aptly named, "Entry Systems Division".

The price/performance of the PC eradicated the mini-computer market overnight. Sure it had technical limitations but the release of computing to the masses swamped those limitations. One now no longer needed "real" programmers to get some actual work done and it was damn cheap by comparison.

The Unix/PC divide was yet to happen. The 16-bit PC enabled non-specialist people whereas Unix was seen, if acknowledged at all, as the domain of arcane geeks. Unix was not practical and PC-DOS was; Unix was academic and PC-DOS was business - end of story.

Times have changed, of course.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
skype: derek.j.parnell

John Reimer wrote:
> Hello Andrei,
> 
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> John Reimer wrote:
>>>
>>>> Putting it bluntly, that's also the exact attitude that will
>>>> distance people from the language.  Show disdain for them, and you
>>>> are guaranteed to alienate people no matter how strong your argument
>>>> is.  That, and such disdain is usually not warranted because it is
>>>> reactive to a shallow response and fails to recognize the deeper
>>>> social issues hinted by such a response.
>>>>
>>> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the
>>> platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit
>>> PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made
>>> programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers
>>> migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the
>>> "gateway" programming platform.
>>>
>> Yah but due to other factors than its technical qualities. Leaving
>> those out of the story puts things in an odd light.
>>
>> Andrei
>>
> 
> 
> He he... that's one reason the polarization effect remains so intact.  Our point of view tends to hold a lot of sway on our interpretation of events. :)  I understood what Walter was getting at, though.... just that the disdain really didn't accomplish anything.
> 
> 
> If I allowed myself, I could easily be caught up in discussing why the popularity of DOS was one of the greatest handicaps of the era... but such an opinion is bound to clash with those those that made their living from it (Hi, Walter :D ) Granted, my point of view, would have been from the perspective of the consumer... and one who, as a teenager, had no investment in it commercially. However, the motivation behind Linux development and use was probably hugely influenced by the industries' rigid hold on DOS 16-bit.... so we probably have DOS (and win 3.1, win 95/98) to thank for Linux's growing popularity.

Such scenarios are very hard to play even in hindsight because of the effect of all butterflies involved. It's easy to imagine that if DOS's original inventor inspired himself from Unix more than CP/M we'd all be better off today. Even things as simple as path separators and newline separators would have changed a lot of things. Technically, clearly DOS was a sort of a distraction, a detour for the overall progress of the field, as were so were many other events. It would be a mistake to forget that fact in a purely technical discussion. But in a higher-level discussion it would also be a mistake to ignore that of all Universes possible, things played out the way they did and no amount of wishful or bitter analysis will change that.


Andrei

Walter Bright wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Back in the early DOS days, there was a lot of disdain for the platform. "Real" programmers used unix workstations, not toy 16 bit PCs. It turned out, though, that most of the fortunes were made programming for DOS, and eventually those programs and programmers migrated to 32 bits and brought the industry with it. DOS was the "gateway" programming platform.
>>
>> Yah but due to other factors than its technical qualities. Leaving those out of the story puts things in an odd light.
> 
> It looks primitive these days, of course, but at the time it hit the sweet spot of max technology for minimal price. The performance/cost was the best available.

I'd add time to market, brilliant marketing, and sheer luck to the mix.

Andrei

Very true.  That's why I try to refrain from gut reactions like my view that "DOS was one of the greatest handicaps of the era" :).  It's very easy to look back and critique decisions made by others... a little too easy; it is a little to easy to do when one isn't in the hotseat of decision-making.  There are certain things, though, that will inevitably annoy the consumer (some of us more than others, I'm sure), especially those that get a little too idealistic sometimes. :)

While "no amount of bitter analysis will change" the way things played out in the past, I believe that thoroughly analyzing (minus the "bitter") the history can certainly help one prepare for the future, or else we are indeed doomed to repeat mistakes.  Naturally, the situations are rarely the same, but many times there are enough similarities for one to draw careful conclusions about cause/effect. That is why D is here, no less. And even, then the challenge still remains. :)

I'm not sure I answered you according to what you were meaning to express, but hopefully I was close.

All the best,

-JJR

The DEC systems have clearly been forgotten <g>. But at the time of the PC intro, DEC was king of the minicomputer business, and the buzz was "wait till you see DEC's response to the PC!" DEC had the LSI-11 machine, superior to the 8086 in nearly every way. All they had to do was repackage it.

DEC finally had a big unveiling of their response, the Rainbow PC. My DEC fanboy friends were incredulous at how bad it was. DEC didn't get it, and they missed the boat, scrood the pooch, borked it up, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, you name it. (The problem was DEC crippled it in order to prevent it from encroaching on their minicomputer business, a business they failed to recognize was obsolete.)

I had an H-11 at the time (a hobby version of the LSI-11). It kicked ass. DEC could have owned the PC business, but they threw it away with both hands, and eventually sank without a trace. I gave away my H-11 for $25.