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From: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Port of g++
Message-ID: <369@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 2 Jan 90 14:13:34 GMT
References: <3897@orion.cf.uci.edu> <246300081@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <213@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <5970@alvin.mcnc.org>
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Reply-To: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu.UUCP (Kent Williams)
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In article <5970@alvin.mcnc.org> spl@mcnc.org.UUCP (Steve Lamont) writes:
>>                         ...  America once had a reputation for
>>ingenuity and excellence.  Japan, et al. didn't "do us in."  We
>>did it to ourselves.  It's not too late to break the cycle.)
>
>I have to take issue with this stance, although this is probably the wrong
>forum to do it in.  America may have had the reputation that you ascribe to
>it.  However, I submit to you that this reputation was won more or less by
>default.

Three brief points: 

1. America has only consistently led the world in grand scale
stupidity, greed and arrogance, since the second world war (witness
Panama, & Central America in general).  Technological and Industrial
superiority has been spotty.  The point Steve Lamont made about
superiority after WWII being a result of Europe and Japan being
trashed is apt.  You can always be technologically superior to someone
you've bombed back to the stone age.

2. Try comparing production code (i.e. the boring stuff that makes
cash register works, etc.) written by Japanese and American
programmers, and you'll stop worrying about software superiority.  I'm
sure (and I sure hope!) there are exceptions to this, but I've never
seen silliness like I've seen in japanese written source.  The
europeans are probably at parity, or ahead in software.  We have an
advantage in that we have English as our language.  Try imagining
writing a program in which all the keywords are in Tagalog!

3. It's all moot anyway.  This is one world, and anything that
benifits country X will, in the long term benefit country Y.
Nationalism is a convoluted form of self-destructiveness.

The original thread of this discussion had to do with G++.  I am in
favor of someone (other than me) doing a port, and coming up with a
set of classes that map to the ObjectiveC classes, just because I do
know C++, and I don't know ObjectiveC.  If I get a minute ;-> I'll
learn ObjectiveC, but until then, G++ would be nice, and philosophy be
hanged.  Discussions of relative merits of the two languages belongs
in comp.languages, or alt.religion

--
                               "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking
Kent Williams                   part that wonders what the part that  isn't
williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu   thinking isn't thinking of" - TMBG