RE: What design is: 911 vs. Fleetwood

["Christopher Barber" <address@hidden>]

> All three of the reasons you give for why Ada was more
> expensive (no one used it by choice, no one wrote
> libraries for it, and no one wrote compilers for it) are
> just the symptoms of real hackers not liking it.

Only if you believe that "real hackers" are the only people who make
business decisions regarding language choice.  I don't believe it.  On the
first commercial project I ever worked on, we were forced to use COBOL
because that is what the client demanded.  This kind of thing is not at all
uncommon.

> It may have shown up in the DoD's books as "language too
> expensive" but the root cause was "language sucked."

I don't know the language well enough to say that, but it still does have
its adherents so it can't be that bad.

> The "average programmer" is a fuzzy target, and vague
> aims always lead to bad work.

Yes, but who says that you have to have only one target prototypical
programmer in mind?  Designing anything with only one person in mind is
usually stupid, whatever the product.

If you design a language for yourself, you are least guaranteed that you
will like it, and presumably others like you, but it would be foolish to
assume that everyone will like it.

- Christopher