Re: Java

[Paul Prescod <address@hidden>]

Dan Weinreb wrote:
> 
>    Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:50:57 -0600
>    From: Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>
> 
>    In general, why is programmer convenience (aka "productivity") such a
>    low priority?
> 
> You mean, why isn't it a scripting language?

I dunno. What's a scripting language? Why excuse does any general
purpose language have for ignoring programmer convenience? I mean if
you're trading off convenience for something (like security) that's one
thing. But if you've just left stuff out, like globbing or regular
expressions (or equivalent) then you've just left things out. You can
learn to do better from so-called scripting languages without adopting
whatever other features you feel defines a "scripting language".

I would personally like to see the category "scripting language" go away
because the implication is that if a language has convenience features
then the language must be designed to be first and foremost convenient
and not scalable or not safe or not secure or.... But you can have
convenience features without letting that be your only central idea.

 Paul Prescod