Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!news-out.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "Derek M. Jones" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:24:22 +0000 Organization: virginmedia.com Lines: 25 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-03-021@comp.compilers> References: <12-03-019@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1331353706 4542 64.57.183.58 (10 Mar 2012 04:28:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:28:26 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: design, history, comment Posted-Date: 09 Mar 2012 23:28:26 EST X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:488 John, > [I'm not sure a software monoculture is an innovation, much less > an interesting one. IBM faced antitrust suits in the 1960s and 70s A language monoculture has benefits. Greater people portability for one. Fewer compilers needed (ok, this group's readers don't consider that a benefit :-) Everybody doing things the same way can also reduce faults. The following experiment found a correlation between percentage source code occurrences and developer knowledge of binary operator precedence. http://www.knosof.co.uk/dev-experiment/accu06.html > in both the US and Europe because their mainframes and OS/360 were > so dominant. And as far as who copies Fortran syntax, every time > you write a=b+c or if(a>b)c=d, or function foo(x,y), you're > writing in Fortran. -John] R copied Fortran syntax. But that has been around for a while. [R? -John]