Re: [colorforth] Ideas

[Jonah Thomas <j2thomas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:

> You can't attack the problem until you're educated 
> in its domain.  In this case, you cannot hope to undermine the 
> established software development world until you *understand* it.  
> Learning C++ is **NOT** learning OOP.  You need to learn C++, Objective 
> C, Oberon-2 at least, Perl, Python, Visual BASIC, and straight C with 
> CORBA, COM (with and without all those APIs and the IDL to make it 
> happen), XML-RPC, etc.  Learn **WHY** these technologies were invented, 
> **WHY** they are so successful (which may not be the same reason).  And, 
> as you might guess, OOP is but one small nano-fragment of the whole 
> computer industry (really, it is).  There are so many other things to 
> learn about.

> Once you become well versed in the modern state of affairs, THEN AND ONLY 
> THEN will you ever hope to sound half-way intelligent when talking about 
> the Forth programming language, its environment, its philosophy, and how 
> these may be applied on a *per-project* basis.

I agree with all this, with the single caveat that it mostly doesn't work.

One of the problems is that the half-life for new languages is 
something like three years, the half-life for new programming 
silver-bullets is perhaps four years, and the half-life of interface 
standards is more like two years.  A lot of what you learn becomes 
useless quickly; some of it becomes less than useless.  The BASIC 
programmer is considered to have a disadvantage over an utter novice 
because he's learned bad habits, the structured programmer is 
considered to have a relentless procedural orientation which handicaps 
him in a message-passing environment, etc.

There's so much out there and it's so fragmented that it's very hard 
to learn it all and do anything with it at the same time.  And so no 
matter how much you know you probably can't sound halfway intelligent 
to more than a minority of audiences.

So there may be room for people who simply solve problems.  Solve your 
own problems well enough and others may possibly want to use your 
solutions.  There's a great big compatibility problem, but there would 
be anyway, and if you get stuck solving problems where the 
compatibility issues are minimal, that may be more productive than 
getting stuck in one little compatibility niche where you waste a lot 
of time on that issue.  Given that you can't do it all.

There may be room for both approaches and all mixtures of them.  If 
you try to solve a problem first yourself you may see more of what's 
going on with other people's solutions.  The more you learn from other 
people the better you'll understand the words they use and the better 
you can talk to them.  Maybe teams of people who have different 
orientations can sometimes accomplish more than one person alone.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: colorforth-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: colorforth-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Main web page - http://www.colorforth.com