[geeks] Software Bloat

[David Cantrell]

Greg A. Woods wrote:
> Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > Maybe the next time a team decides to take on the wordprocessor market,
> > they should consider just building a small simple little run time, and
> > then build the rest on top using python or guile (I'm partial to guile,
> > but python might be more palletable to people like my parents).
> Ruby would be better.  :-)
> Smalltalk would be ideal.
> Scheme isn't bad though, and ANSI Common Lisp is OK too.

I don't think it matters too much.  To a non-programmer - like my parents,
or, I imagine, Joshua's - then python, guile, lisp, ruby, smalltalk, tcl,
perl, vb, and any of the other scripting languages, are all equally alien.
So what if perl lets you get closer to an English sentence, or if ruby is
more orthogonal, or if smalltalk lets you Do More With Less.  Doesn't
matter which one you go for, you've still got to learn logic, basic maths,
and a whole new language family* when you learn your first programming
language.

OTOH, if we assume that most users won't touch the scripting language and
that it'll be people like us who use it to write applications for users
on top of the base of C, then we need to support more than one language.
I can't stand python, and no doubt the pythonistas can't stand perl, and
everyone hates java apart from the J2EE fanboys, and ... well, if we *do*
support only one language, then scheme, common lisp, or smalltalk, in that
order of preference, would get my vote.

> What we (i.e. software developers and computer types in general) really
> need to do is to find a way to teach the masses how to do more with less.

And to do that they need to be provided with tools *and* the education to
use them.  The tools ain't a problem.  The education is.  The school-level
computer education I see here is oriented to making sure the drones know
how to drive a word processor in dummy mode.

> > Writing systems like this in a scripting language could be considered a sign of
> > bloat by some people.  It probably would require more disk space.  But, it 
> > should make the software more maintainable, and hopefully faster (easier to 
> > work with language usually means easier to optimize, plus you can always
> > rewrite critical parts in C if need be), and if it is those 2 things, most
> > people won't care about the disk space.
> 
> You're right about that first sentence, at least according to every
> Emacs detractor I've ever heard from!  ;-)

I'm an emacs detractor, and I don't think it's overly bloated for what it
does.  The 20Mb that it takes on my box is 20Mb crammed with features.

> However you're also right on the money in the last sentence too.  Look
> around on the net for the "autobiography" about the development of
> AutoCAD and the decision to use lisp as its extension language.

Mmmmm ... I loved that language!

* - family in the sense of Indo-European vs Semitic vs Dravidian vs
Computer**.  It's all in the syntax.  I remember my confusion coming across
the dual in Arabic for the first time (arabic has singular, dual and plural).
Computer languages have lots of alien concepts which we simply don't come
across in human languages.

** - thankfully, all the languages in the family are closely related.  You
don't end up with languages as diverse as Welsh, Greek and Swedish.  I
s'pose the most divergent computer languages are maybe as far apart as
English and Anglo-Saxon.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   Educating this luser would be something to frustrate even the
   unflappable Yoda and make him jam a lightsaber up his arse
   while screaming "praise evil, the Dark Side is your friend!".
                              -- Derek Balling, in the Monastery