Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!acw!scott
From: scott@acw.com (Scott Guthery)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Syntax Change Not Paradigm Shift
Message-ID: <47.UUL1.3#913@acw.com>
Date: 14 Apr 91 15:28:06 GMT
Organization: Austin Code Works
Lines: 46

Sorry, Jargonauts, a syntax change is not a paradigm shift.  There is nothing
- I repeat, nothing - new in object-oriented programming save a lot of
obfuscating New Age Babel [sic]. The decennial syntax changes characteristic
of non-commercial programming insure full employment for otherwise useless
coders who have run out of new ideas but seek to remain employed in
monkey-at-the-typewriter rewriting of old ones.  

Every routine in the NIH C++ Class Library can be found in assembly language
libraries (for every machine you care to name), Fortran libraries (Fortran I,
II, III, IV, DEC, IBM, etc.), C libraries (AT&T, BSD, Sun, HP, Mach, Next,
Xenix, etc.), Pascal libraries (ISO, Turbo, DEC, etc.), PL/I libraries (IBM,
Unisys, Standard), Lisp libraries (east coast, west coast, Common, Portable,
E, etc.), and Basic libraries (True, Microsoft, HP, etc.).  And I'll bet I
can find them in Eiffel libraries, Objective-C libraries, Common Loops
libraries, and Smalltalk libraries (Xerox, Digitalk, Tektronix, etc.).  It
constantly amazes me that they continue to pay us for this text mongering and
it embarrasses me that we accept the money.  

In the commercial realm where real computing is done and where the vast
majority of both the cycles and the dollars of computing are found, one
doesn't find this mindless pursuit of endless transliteration.  COBOL is
sufficient and has been for years.  There is, you see, a real job to get
done.

Sooner or later people who have had experience with and understand software
will become general managers.  Their memory of software trends will be longer
than the current generation of general managers.  They will remember the
promises of high level languages, structured programming, subroutine
libraries, portability, artificial intelligence, and modular programming.
They will see through the smoke and recognize the same old scam dressed up in
a new vocabularly.  And they will say, "Prove it."  Then we'll be really
stuck.

But we did give ample warning, didn't we? Always, always beware of a field of
endeavor that feels it must put "science" in its name: political science,
social science, computer science. 

							Cheers, Scott


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"Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be
 able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other 
 purposes.  By instilling nonsense, it unifies populations and generates
 collective enthusiasm."				Bertrand Russell
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