Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdcad!dgcad!dg-rtp!farmhand!cole
From: cole@farmhand.rtp.dg.com (Bill Cole)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: programming quality vs. language
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.192230.22591@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 19:22:30 GMT
References: <20176@alice.att.com>
Sender: cole@farmhand (Bill Cole)
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Lines: 33

Andrew Koenig writes:
|> All other things being equal, I would expect the average quality
|> of programs written in a language to increase along with the
|> price of a typical compiler for that language.
|> 
|> Consider: someone who wants to learn to program and doesn't even
|> know enough to have an opinion about what language to use will probably
|> start with a bias toward langauges for which cheap compilers are
|> available.
|> 
|> On the other end of the spectrum, languages for which the only available
|> compilers are very expensive will probably be used mostly by people
|> whose employers have paid for said compilers.
|> 
|> In other words: cheap compilers are used by random hackers, expensive
|> ones by professionals.  I would expect this to be true regardless
|> of the merits of the languages themselves.

That's a PC sort of statement, isn't it?  There are plenty of hackers with
too much money to spend on software systems.  Inexpensive stuff may be
just the right thing for a certain task set -- even though it may have all
the features of the higher priced spread.

In my days as an IBM junky, I saw lots of large organizations using the
most expensive tools for the most underpaid and untalented set of 
programmers around.  You can actually make the reverse observation as well.
The most expensive tools are used by the least talented programmers who
probably don't know how to use them properly in the first.  These folks
tend to churn out code that wouldn't pass CS101, but they ARE programmers
and they ARE employed and their employers WON'T pay them any better no
matter how good they get.  But someone else will!

The views are not those of anyone who may or may not know me,
/Bill