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What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

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  What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-01-22 03:34 +1100
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Michiel Overtoom <motoom@xs4all.nl> - 2015-01-21 18:45 +0100
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2015-01-21 12:21 -0600
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2015-02-07 23:35 +0000
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-01-21 19:18 +0000
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 09:35 +1100
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-01-21 23:10 +0000
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-01-22 02:25 +0200
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2015-01-21 21:22 -0600
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-01-22 17:52 +0000
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Anthony Papillion <anthony@cajuntechie.org> - 2015-01-21 17:19 -0600
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 10:41 +1100
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python John Ladasky <john_ladasky@sbcglobal.net> - 2015-01-21 16:22 -0800
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> - 2015-01-21 17:37 -0600
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 10:55 +1100
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> - 2015-01-23 16:51 -0600
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> - 2015-01-24 08:09 +0000
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-24 19:16 +1100
              Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> - 2015-01-24 14:09 +0000
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Gene Heskett <gheskett@wdtv.com> - 2015-01-24 06:34 -0500
              Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> - 2015-01-24 14:14 +0000
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-24 09:57 +1100
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> - 2015-01-26 14:18 -0600
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> - 2015-01-23 16:51 -0600
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2015-01-21 17:08 -0700
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2015-01-21 21:59 -0500
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 14:08 +1100
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Emil Oppeln-Bronikowski <emil@fuse.pl> - 2015-01-22 05:46 +0100
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2015-02-09 13:28 -0800
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-01-21 15:46 -0800
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 10:57 +1100
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Mario Figueiredo <marfig@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 01:09 +0100
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2015-01-21 17:00 -0800
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 12:36 +1100
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-01-21 17:38 -0800
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 12:45 +1100
              Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-01-21 18:53 -0800
                Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 13:59 +1100
                  Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2015-02-07 23:54 +0000
                    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-02-08 11:57 +1100
                      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-02-08 18:59 +1100
                        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-02-08 19:24 +1100
              Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2015-01-23 15:35 +1000
                Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-23 17:07 +1100
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2015-01-21 17:44 -0800
          Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2015-01-22 14:23 +1100
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 15:34 +1100
            Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2015-01-23 15:39 +1000
              Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2015-01-23 14:48 -0800
                Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Emile van Sebille <emile@fenx.com> - 2015-01-23 14:58 -0800
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Mario Figueiredo <marfig@gmail.com> - 2015-01-22 01:16 +0100
        Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2015-01-22 00:45 -0500
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> - 2015-01-21 18:11 -0800
      Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2015-01-22 06:30 +0000
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Gene Heskett <gheskett@wdtv.com> - 2015-01-22 07:26 -0500
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Emil Oppeln-Bronikowski <emil@fuse.pl> - 2015-01-22 16:47 +0100
    Re: What killed Smalltalk could kill Python Tony the Tiger <tony@tiger.invalid> - 2015-01-23 18:04 +0000

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#84130 — What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby". (No cheering, that sort of attitude is one of
the things that killed Smalltalk.) Although Martin discusses Ruby, the
lessons could also apply to Python.

Video is available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3iRjKj7C0

Youngsters may not be aware of Smalltalk. It was the language which
popularised object oriented programming. Technically, Simula was the first
OOP language, but Smalltalk popularised it. For a decade or two in the 80s
and 90s, Smalltalk was *the* killer language, the one everybody wanted to
use if only their boss would let them. It was amazingly innovative:
Smalltalk introduced unit testing, test driven development, and it had
powerful refactoring IDEs back in the 1990s.

And now it's all but dead. Why did it die, and how can Python (or Ruby for
that matter) avoid the same fate?

Martin is a very entertaining speaker, funny and knowledgeable. It is a very
entertaining talk, and he covers not just Smalltalk and Ruby but the nature
of professionalism, how fear makes code worse, how to make code better,
Ward Cunningham, the hormonal characteristics of various languages, the
language wars of the 1990s, what is clean code, and more.



-- 
Steven

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#84132

Hi Steven, you wrote:

> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".

I've yet to watch the video, I'll do that later tonight, but I also remember what DHH said about Smalltalk in his FLOSS interview about Rails, with Randal Schwartz, in July 2009:

"""
[...] Smalltalk in itself... I tried a few times with some of the images, but it's too much of a different world. It's too idealistic for me in some senses. It's too much “throw out everything you know and I will show you a new world”. I haven't been ready to take that red pill.

I really like that Ruby is sort of, lets extract 80, 90 percent of what awesome about that and inject it with some real-world pragmatic approaches, like: You can use the text editor you like; You can save files on the file system; You can all these things in tracks with the real world. You don't have to leave everything behind to jump into this Smalltalk world. To me the whole thing about the Smalltalk images which is always just too confusing to me. Why? There's all this different distributions, they're not really compatible, it just seems like a hassle. I just didn't have the patience to wade through all that. But I'm glad somebody else did. I'm glad that all that wisdom is available mostly to people using Ruby. So, yeah, again: Not really.
"""

Source: http://www.transcribed-interview.com/dhh-rails-david-heinemeier-hansson-interview-randal-schwartz-floss.html

Disclosure: I'm the one who made that transcription, and I recognized it from memory.

Greetings,

-- 
"You can't actually make computers run faster, you can only make them do less." - RiderOfGiraffes

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#84135

On 2015-01-22 03:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby". 

Holy pacing, Batman.  Watching it at 2x leaves me wondering how much
of the stage was worn off during the presentation.

> And now it's all but dead. Why did it die, and how can Python (or
> Ruby for that matter) avoid the same fate?

In my experience, most Python has a particularly low WTF-per-minute
score.

But mostly Michael's reply addresses my biggest pain points the last
couple times I tried Smalltalk: The whole "images" thing impeded me
from easily using my development preferred environment.

With Python, I can just install it and then either fire up the
REPL, or type some code into a file and run it (same I suppose would
go for Ruby).

I fought for over an hour trying to figure out how to just get
ANYTHING to run in Smalltalk.  I installed Squeak on Debian and yet I
couldn't get any code examples to run.  I had to go find some
environments on the web, download them, modify them, and eventually
something ran.  Eventually I just gave up and returned to a world
where everything made sense.

-tkc

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#85342

In article <mailman.17920.1421864740.18130.python-list@python.org>,
Tim Chase  <python.list@tim.thechases.com> wrote:
>On 2015-01-22 03:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
>> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
>
>Holy pacing, Batman.  Watching it at 2x leaves me wondering how much
>of the stage was worn off during the presentation.
>
>> And now it's all but dead. Why did it die, and how can Python (or
>> Ruby for that matter) avoid the same fate?
>
>In my experience, most Python has a particularly low WTF-per-minute
>score.
>
>But mostly Michael's reply addresses my biggest pain points the last
>couple times I tried Smalltalk: The whole "images" thing impeded me
>from easily using my development preferred environment.
>
>With Python, I can just install it and then either fire up the
>REPL, or type some code into a file and run it (same I suppose would
>go for Ruby).
>
>I fought for over an hour trying to figure out how to just get
>ANYTHING to run in Smalltalk.  I installed Squeak on Debian and yet I
>couldn't get any code examples to run.  I had to go find some
>environments on the web, download them, modify them, and eventually
>something ran.  Eventually I just gave up and returned to a world
>where everything made sense.

This is the introductory chapter of my Forth:

"
4 Manual
********

4.1 Getting started
===================

4.1.1 Hello world!
------------------

Type `lina64' to get into your interactive Forth system.  You will see
a signon message.  While sitting in your interactive Forth doing a
"hello world" is easy:
     "Hello world!" TYPE
     Hello world! OK
   Note that the computer ends its output with `OK' to indicate that it
has completed the command.
Making it into an interactively usable program is also easy:
     : HELLO "Hello world!" TYPE CR ;
     OK
     HELLO
     Hello world!
     OK
   This means you type the command `HELLO' while you are in lina64.  As
soon as you leave lina64, the new command is gone.

If you want to use the program a second time, you can put it in a file
`hello.frt'.  It just contains the definition we typed earlier:
      : HELLO "Hello world!" TYPE CR ;
   This file can be `INCLUDED'  inorder to add the command `HELLO' to
your Forth environment, like so:
     "hello.frt" INCLUDED
     OK
     HELLO
     Hello world!
     OK
   During development you probably have started with `lina64 -e', so
you need just type
     INCLUDE hello.frt

   In order to make a stand alone program to say hello you can use that
same source file, again `hello.frt'.  Now build the program by
lina64 -c hello.frt
(That is `c' for compile.)  The result is a file `hello' .  This file
can be run from your command interpreter, or shell.  It is a single
file that you can pass to some one else to run on their computer,
without the need for them to install Forth.  For the compiler to run
you must have the library correctly installed.
"

Seems like I did it slightly better.
(Mind you, this is chapter 4, for beginners there is chapter 2,
e.g. if the `` : '' word puzzles you.)

Groetjes Albert



>
>-tkc
>
>
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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#84139

On 2015-01-21, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".

But does he answer the more important question "and can we use it to
kill PHP?".

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! What UNIVERSE is this,
                                  at               please??
                              gmail.com            

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#84150

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:18 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 2015-01-21, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
>> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
>> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
>
> But does he answer the more important question "and can we use it to
> kill PHP?".

PHP won't die so long as there are people willing to apologize for its
every flaw and defend it on the basis that huge sites X, Y, and Z all
use it. But we don't need it to die. All we need is for Python to
live, and we can ignore PHP and write Unicode-aware web sites with
simple, trustworthy entry points, and not worry about the rest.

ChrisA

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#84152

On 2015-01-21, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:18 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2015-01-21, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
>>> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
>>> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
>>
>> But does he answer the more important question "and can we use it to
>> kill PHP?".
>
> PHP won't die so long as there are people willing to apologize for
> its every flaw and defend it on the basis that huge sites X, Y, and Z
> all use it. But we don't need it to die. All we need is for Python to
> live, and we can ignore PHP and write Unicode-aware web sites with
> simple, trustworthy entry points, and not worry about the rest.

I happily ignored PHP until a couple years back when we decided to use
PHP for the web site on a small embedded Linux system.  The reasoning
was that we didn't have any significant internal web site development
skills, and using PHP on Linux would make it easy to contract out the
web site design using an off-the-shelf light-weight framework.

[At the time, a couple of us could stumble around with HTML enough to
generate web pages that looked fresh out of 1995, but that was about
it. The web pages in our older devices looked rather "retro" and had
pretty limited functionality.]

At a certain point we couldn't afford the contractors any longer and
somebody had to take over maintenance and development of the web
stuff.  The JavaScript and jQuery part of it isn't bad.  Both have had
some thought put into them: they have their quirks but there's a
certain internal consistency and elegence.

PHP, on the other hand makes me want to scream.  It's all just a
random mess -- it's nothing _but_ quirks.  As one of the contractors
once said: PHP is like a combination of all the worst features of
bash, perl, and C.

I briefly considered trying to switch to Python, but the Python
footprint is just too big...

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! RELATIVES!!
                                  at               
                              gmail.com            

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#84166

Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid>:

> [At the time, a couple of us could stumble around with HTML enough to
> generate web pages that looked fresh out of 1995, but that was about
> it. The web pages in our older devices looked rather "retro" and had
> pretty limited functionality.]

I miss that plain old look of web pages.


Marko

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#84178

On 2015-01-21 23:10, Grant Edwards wrote:
> I happily ignored PHP until a couple years back when we decided to
> use PHP for the web site on a small embedded Linux system. 
[snip]
> I briefly considered trying to switch to Python, but the Python
> footprint is just too big...

Interesting that your experience swung that way.

I worked on a contract about a year ago where it involved deploying
web services & ZigBee communications on a Digi Connectport[1] which is
certainly a rather underpowered device (20MB of memory is tight).  My
biggest issue was the project-lead's choice of CherryPy and
SQLObject...neither has nearly the same quality of documentation as
I'd grown accustomed to in the Django world.  Yet I was able to run
an HTTPS CherryPy server talking to a local sqlite database with
minimal trouble, handling a modest (i.e., small business) load.

-tkc

[1]
http://www.digi.com/products/wireless-routers-gateways/gateways/xbee-gateway#specs

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#84242

On 2015-01-22, Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> On 2015-01-21 23:10, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> I happily ignored PHP until a couple years back when we decided to
>> use PHP for the web site on a small embedded Linux system. 
> [snip]
>> I briefly considered trying to switch to Python, but the Python
>> footprint is just too big...
>
> Interesting that your experience swung that way.
>
> I worked on a contract about a year ago where it involved deploying
> web services & ZigBee communications on a Digi Connectport[1] which is
> certainly a rather underpowered device (20MB of memory is tight).  My
> biggest issue was the project-lead's choice of CherryPy and
> SQLObject...neither has nearly the same quality of documentation as
> I'd grown accustomed to in the Django world.  Yet I was able to run
> an HTTPS CherryPy server talking to a local sqlite database with
> minimal trouble, handling a modest (i.e., small business) load.

Maybe I should look at Python again.

It's too late for this product, but maybe in the future...

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! But was he mature
                                  at               enough last night at the
                              gmail.com            lesbian masquerade?

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#84154

On 01/21/2015 04:35 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:18 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2015-01-21, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
>>> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
>>> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
>>
>> But does he answer the more important question "and can we use it to
>> kill PHP?".
> 
> PHP won't die so long as there are people willing to apologize for its
> every flaw and defend it on the basis that huge sites X, Y, and Z all
> use it. But we don't need it to die. All we need is for Python to
> live, and we can ignore PHP and write Unicode-aware web sites with
> simple, trustworthy entry points, and not worry about the rest.

To be fair, PHP has come a long way in the last few years and, I hear,
there's movements within the community to make it better. Namespaces
were a bit deal as were a few other things. Personally, while I am
LOVING Python, I'd be sad to see PHP die. It's got a lot of potential if
the community can get its crap together and take off the ruby coloured
glasses.

Anthony

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#84159

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Anthony Papillion
<anthony@cajuntechie.org> wrote:
> To be fair, PHP has come a long way in the last few years and, I hear,
> there's movements within the community to make it better. Namespaces
> were a bit deal as were a few other things. Personally, while I am
> LOVING Python, I'd be sad to see PHP die. It's got a lot of potential if
> the community can get its crap together and take off the ruby coloured
> glasses.

The huge advantage of PHP over other languages is that it comes free
with any cheap web host. That's also a huge *dis*advantage when it
comes to "movements... to make it better", because you can't know when
the new version will become sufficiently prevalent to depend on it.
I've seen PHP 4 compatibility code in current versions of some big
frameworks, although I've no idea whether that implies actual support
or just that nobody's removed it yet.

But there are a few fundamental problems with PHP, which are derived
directly from its philosophies. One of them is that any file in some
directory tree is automatically an entry point - specifically, an
*executable* entry point. PHP frameworks that accept file uploads have
to go to great lengths to ensure that malicious users can't upload
code and run it. Every web framework I've seen for Python, Ruby, Pike,
etc, has URL routing defined by the application, not the file system,
and if you define a readable uploads directory, all you're going to do
is allow people to re-download the same file. Even old CGI scripts,
where file system presence defined entry points, weren't as bad as PHP
- firstly because they were usually restricted to /cgi-bin/ (and you
simply wouldn't allow world writing to that directory), and secondly
because the scripts had to be marked executable, which PHP scripts
don't.

Maybe PHP will grow true Unicode support in a future version. Maybe
it'll gain a nice object model that compares well to Python's or
Ruby's or whichever other you want to look at. Maybe there'll be a
complete reworking of string comparisons so that "12e2" is no longer
equal to "1200". But I doubt it'll ever shift away from file-system
entry points.

And that's why I will continue to push people to Python+Flask rather than PHP.

ChrisA

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#84165

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 11:18:54 AM UTC-8, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2015-01-21, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> > In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
> > Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby".
> 
> But does he answer the more important question "and can we use it to
> kill PHP?".

LOL!

Seriously, I did.

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#84156

On 01/21/2015 10:34 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> In 2009, Robert Martin gave a talk at RailsConf titled "What Killed
> Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby". (No cheering, that sort of attitude is one of
> the things that killed Smalltalk.) Although Martin discusses Ruby, the
> lessons could also apply to Python.


I find these kinds of discussions sort of silly.  Once there is a critical
mass of installed base, no language EVER dies.

I suspect the real reason Smalltalk sort of got kicked to the curb is because
a) It clung to a kind of OO purity that simply is at odds with the practice
of programming at large scale  and   b) It thus never built the aforementioned
critical mass.

Language adoption at the scale needed to make a real dent doesn't happen
because of technical superiority (witness PHP as just one example).  It happens
because lots of people solve real problems faster than they used to.
In fact - outside the language cognoscenti and uber nerd community - I'd
argue that  Python adoption has little to do with functional programming,
lambda, OO, generators, or whatever happens to float your boat.  Python
got adopted because it made code production faster, and therefore cheaper.
Economics matters way more than technology here, I think.

I wrote some rambling disquisition on these matters some years ago ...

  http://www.tundraware.com/TechnicalNotes/Python-Is-Middleware

  http://www.tundraware.com/TechnicalNotes/How-To-Pick-A-Programming-Language
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk     tundra@tundraware.com
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

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#84160

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
> I find these kinds of discussions sort of silly.  Once there is a critical
> mass of installed base, no language EVER dies.

Not sure about that. Back in the 1990s, I wrote most of my code in
REXX, either command-line or using a GUI toolkit like VX-REXX. Where's
REXX today? Well, let's see. It's still the native-ish language of
OS/2. Where's OS/2 today? Left behind. REXX has no Unicode support (it
does, however, support DBCS - useful, no?), no inbuilt networking
support (there are third-party TCP/IP socket libraries for OS/2 REXX,
but I don't know that other REXX implementations have socket services;
and that's just basic BSD sockets, no higher-level protocol handling
at all), etc, etc. Sure, it's not technically dead... but is anyone
developing the language further? I don't think so. Is new REXX code
being written? Not a lot. Yet when OS/2 was more popular, REXX
definitely had its installed base. It was the one obvious scripting
language for any OS/2 program. Languages can definitely die, or at
least be so left behind that they may as well be dead.

ChrisA

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#84414

On 01/21/2015 05:55 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
>> I find these kinds of discussions sort of silly.  Once there is a critical
>> mass of installed base, no language EVER dies.
> 
> Not sure about that. Back in the 1990s, I wrote most of my code in
> REXX, either command-line or using a GUI toolkit like VX-REXX. Where's
> REXX today? Well, let's see. It's still the native-ish language of
> OS/2. Where's OS/2 today? Left behind. REXX has no Unicode support (it
> does, however, support DBCS - useful, no?), no inbuilt networking
> support (there are third-party TCP/IP socket libraries for OS/2 REXX,
> but I don't know that other REXX implementations have socket services;
> and that's just basic BSD sockets, no higher-level protocol handling
> at all), etc, etc. Sure, it's not technically dead... but is anyone
> developing the language further? I don't think so. Is new REXX code
> being written? Not a lot. Yet when OS/2 was more popular, REXX
> definitely had its installed base. It was the one obvious scripting
> language for any OS/2 program. Languages can definitely die, or at
> least be so left behind that they may as well be dead.
> 
> ChrisA
> 

Rexx is still well used on mainframes.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk     tundra@tundraware.com
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

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#84446

in 734904 20150123 225104 Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
>On 01/21/2015 05:55 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
>>> I find these kinds of discussions sort of silly.  Once there is a critical
>>> mass of installed base, no language EVER dies.
>>
>> Not sure about that. Back in the 1990s, I wrote most of my code in
>> REXX, either command-line or using a GUI toolkit like VX-REXX. Where's
>> REXX today? Well, let's see. It's still the native-ish language of
>> OS/2. Where's OS/2 today? Left behind. REXX has no Unicode support (it
>> does, however, support DBCS - useful, no?), no inbuilt networking
>> support (there are third-party TCP/IP socket libraries for OS/2 REXX,
>> but I don't know that other REXX implementations have socket services;
>> and that's just basic BSD sockets, no higher-level protocol handling
>> at all), etc, etc. Sure, it's not technically dead... but is anyone
>> developing the language further? I don't think so. Is new REXX code
>> being written? Not a lot. Yet when OS/2 was more popular, REXX
>> definitely had its installed base. It was the one obvious scripting
>> language for any OS/2 program. Languages can definitely die, or at
>> least be so left behind that they may as well be dead.
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
>
>Rexx is still well used on mainframes.

http://www.oorexx.org/

I use ooRexx every day, on Linux mostly, but also available on Windows.

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#84447

On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> wrote:
> http://www.oorexx.org/
>
> I use ooRexx every day, on Linux mostly, but also available on Windows.

So the question really is: Why that, as opposed to some other
language? Can you say, in one sentence, what ooRexx has that other
languages don't have?

ChrisA

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#84466

in 734937 20150124 081658 Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> wrote:
>> http://www.oorexx.org/
>>
>> I use ooRexx every day, on Linux mostly, but also available on Windows.
>
>So the question really is: Why that, as opposed to some other
>language? Can you say, in one sentence, what ooRexx has that other
>languages don't have?

I was a mainframe programmer from 1963 to 2003 and used Rexx from its 
beginnings in 1981; also on OS/2 and Linux. 
I've never found anything to replace it, and it's the most readable language.
 

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#84459

On Saturday 24 January 2015 03:09:51 Bob Martin did opine
And Gene did reply:
> in 734904 20150123 225104 Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
> >On 01/21/2015 05:55 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Tim Daneliuk 
<tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
> >>> I find these kinds of discussions sort of silly.  Once there is a
> >>> critical mass of installed base, no language EVER dies.
> >> 
> >> Not sure about that. Back in the 1990s, I wrote most of my code in
> >> REXX, either command-line or using a GUI toolkit like VX-REXX.
> >> Where's REXX today? Well, let's see. It's still the native-ish
> >> language of OS/2. Where's OS/2 today? Left behind. REXX has no
> >> Unicode support (it does, however, support DBCS - useful, no?), no
> >> inbuilt networking support (there are third-party TCP/IP socket
> >> libraries for OS/2 REXX, but I don't know that other REXX
> >> implementations have socket services; and that's just basic BSD
> >> sockets, no higher-level protocol handling at all), etc, etc. Sure,
> >> it's not technically dead... but is anyone developing the language
> >> further? I don't think so. Is new REXX code being written? Not a
> >> lot. Yet when OS/2 was more popular, REXX definitely had its
> >> installed base. It was the one obvious scripting language for any
> >> OS/2 program. Languages can definitely die, or at least be so left
> >> behind that they may as well be dead.
> >> 
> >> ChrisA
> >
> >Rexx is still well used on mainframes.
> 
> http://www.oorexx.org/
> 
> I use ooRexx every day, on Linux mostly, but also available on Windows.

Can it run typical AREXX source?  I don't see a single syllable on that 
now 5 year old site indicating any such capability.

Example: Something needs to be synchronized to occur in the first tick of 
the next minute, and has nothing to do until then, so it queries the 
system for the number of ticks remaining in this minute, then puts itself 
to sleep for that long.

Is this possible in ooRexx?

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS

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