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From: daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP (Crack?  No thanks, I've got a new CD player)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Cynic's Guide to Software Engineering, part 3
Message-ID: <1950@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 88 22:47:13 GMT
References: <2636@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
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In <2636@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> neff@Shasta.stanford.edu (Randall Neff) writes:

>	Monolingualism:  the Religion and Curse of Software Engineering
...
>Similar comments can be made about mono-operating-system types and the
>great religious flame wars about text editors.  Mono-anything enthusiasts are
>responsible for braking the flow of new software engineering concepts and 
>tools.  Mono's like to freeze progress and  stagnate in their Mono religions.
>This sort of explains why a programming language designed in 1954-57 is the
>language of choice on the world's fastest computers.  

Being prone to inventing contrary positions to investigate a dialectic,
I wonder about the curse of mono-lingualism.  There seem to be few
complaints about the use of English as the Air Traffic Control language. 
At some point, won't language hopping make you less able to communicate
effectively?  Does knowing a smattering of French, German, Japanese,
Chinese, Swahili and really help you write in English?

Monolinguistic people slow the flow of progress in the development of
new languages.  That does not necessarily equate to impeding the
abililty of those people to express new thoughts in their native
language.  In general, it is probably more productive for most writer or
programmers to develop a mastery of one language than to dabble in many
or invent new ones.

It is only when the old languages/paradigms become incapable of handling
a new problem space that it is really necessary to change, and then the
followers of the old order are in trouble.  It is difficult to say when
one of these revolutions is happening until it is over.  

We have just barely gotten out of the "operating systems are written in
assembler" mind set.  It is hard for me to believe that, for sake of
argument, FORTRAN is incapable or even very seriously flawed in its
ability to model physics problems compared to any of the likely
alternatives.

-dB

See:  Thomas S. Kuhn, _The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions_.  Many
people like to envision themselves as revolutionaries.  Very few are, or
should be.



"Remember, there's a seeker born every minute."  -- Happy Harry Cox.
{amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, ptsfa, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb@rtech.uucp