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From: gwyn@BRL.ARPA (Doug Gwyn, VLD/VMB)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re:  More language "religion"
Message-ID: <8705221752.aa07219@VGR.BRL.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 22-May-87 17:52:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: VGR.8705221752.aa07219
Posted: Fri May 22 17:52:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 19:02:37 EDT
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As I see it, the problem is that 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law).
This applies to programming (or should we say software engineering) as well
as to other professions.  One thing to keep in mind is this ALSO applies to
academia.  Good real-world engineering practice (of any sort) does not bear
very close resemblence to the theoretical teachings of school.  Concentrating
on the "theoretical beauty and perfection" of a particular technique will
often distract one from noticing that it doesn't meet the actual needs.

The best programmers I know of are quite aware of theoretical results in
language design, implementations of new languages, structured development
methodology, and so forth.  But they can get their job done quite well with
"theoretically" inferior tools, nonetheless.  The sound basic principles of
software engineering are not tied to specific language syntax, but can be
applied in many contexts.  For example, David Gries's "The Science of
Computer Programming" is a good introduction to an area of algorithm
development methodology, whether or not one has at hand a language very
similar to the one used by Gries.  On the other hand, the methods of that
book are totally outclassed by many real-world problem situations that
demand more flexible approaches (although formal methods are still useful
for subdomains of the overall problem).

Now, it is certainly true that the "hobbyist" publications (everything
from Byte on down) tend to show no signs of having heard of progress made
in gaining control over the software development process made during the
past twenty years; also, many programming practitioners who have been
around that long have not kept up with genuine improvements in methodology.
This is hardly surprising (Sturgeon's Law), but it is perhaps more than
usually dangerous since programming has spread as a profession far faster
than traditional engineering professions.  It is actually fairly hard to
find good programming professionals when so many hackers abound.  But
they're out there, in that ~10% who know what they're doing.

Rather than focus too narrowly on issues of programming language syntax,
let's be more concerned about the general educational issue.