RE: No side effects holy cow. ( Re: process order (still...) )

Subject: RE: No side effects holy cow. ( Re: process order (still...) )
From: Khun Yee Fung <KFung@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 16:41:22 -0400
	I think this has nothing to do with me. My point is that 
	for a *very* long time people *are* happy using variables.
	I don't understand why people should *now* fall in love with 
	functional programming when it has been constantly  rejected 
	by 'most of developers'  for very long time.

This observation about popularity is certainly true. But if you look at what
has been happening, the picture is actually quite interesting. The one truly
dominant language since the '60s is COBOL. Every other language can be
considered as a niche language when the number of programmers of the various
languages are compared. Only in the last 10 years that other languages had
made any inroad.

Right now, probably Visual Basic, C++, and Java are the three languages with
many programmers. None I would say is the dominant language. Excel is
probably the dominant programming language if you consider Excel as a
programming tool. The number of people who are now using Excel is probably
greater than the number of programmers for the other languages combined.

If you look past the number of people programming in a certain language and
look at different domains instead, the picture changes quite a bit. For
instance, SQL (mostly side-effect free as well) is dominant in the database
field. If you look at telecommunication, it is still mostly C, with more and
more C++ and Java thrown in. If you look at web development, most developers
know Javascript and some Perl.

The AI field has always been Lisp, although Prolog was quite popular for a
while.

Now, I am not sure where the other functional  languages are used for.
Miranda is a teaching language I believe. I am not sure about Haskell. SASL
is probably dead. Standard ML, CAML, Scheme are taught in universities...

However, I am not sure COBOL was popular because people liked it. Maybe IBM
really had its influence on what language was used. Same thing with C in
telecommunication. Some times, a language is simply something you have to
learn to survive (like English was to me when I was younger).

	But I think somebody should be a mazoshist to be happy 
	with writing 10 lines of <xsl:call-template instead of 2 lines,
place 
	the variable outside the stylesheet to use document() hack and 
	do things like that.

I just helped a developer to write a recursive named template. I know
exactly what you mean. He did not complain about the syntax though. Just
something he has to get proficient to handle his job is his attitude.
 
	The other thing is that masses are not bying not-obvious 
	concepts. I think that very limited number of people will use the 
	document() - with - 2 - parameters hack.  If it takes 
	a long time for *superb* XSL developer to *understand* 
	what is the semantics of some construction ( that has 
	been illustrated by this list ) - that simply means that 
	'ordinary people' will never use such a ( crazy ) construct.

Document() with 2 parameters is also something I have given up explaining to
the developers.

So far, my experience with the web developers have been a largely positive
one. They become frustrated once in a while but it is the same with every
tool they have to use.

In the internal training session I gave recently, the attitude among the web
developers has been very positive. They asked many questions but in general
were very receptive to XSLT and XML. Beside HTML, Flash, Photoshop,
Director, etc. etc., XML/XSLT is another tool they have to learn.

The same thing cannot be said about the software engineers in the session.
They are clearly more critical. Being a computer science graduate myself I
consider that attitude as a failure of their universities to teach them the
right attitude at learning.

Regards,
Khun Yee


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