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brian_d_foy (44)
Journal of brian_d_foy (44)
More stupid patents: IsNot
Ziggy told me told that Microsoft is trying to patent IsNot.
In Peter Coffee's blog about this I found this little gem:
One of the biggest boons to software productivity has been the advent of powerful scripting languages such as Python, Perl, Ruby, and many others. I agree with German developer Falk Bruegmann when he says that "we should expect to see a trend from languages that put the main emphasis on efficiency to languages which put their emphasis on productivity and scalability... I expect dynamically typed languages traditionally used for scripting to be enhanced for better scalability by better package systems, better tools or improvements in the type system... Such "enhanced" scripting languages are well-positioned to take away market share from traditional system languages."
--Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code
They keep complaining, but... (Score:1)
Computers versus Programmers (Score:2)
I was recently writing about something very similar [perl.org]. Basically, the closer you can express your program in terms of the problem domain, the more productive you become. As an example, I reduced a 14 line SQL script down to a one-line problem statement. If that one-line statement can be the program, we're doing well.
That is what dynamic languages are coming closer to achieving. By contrast, back in the 60s and 70s, you used to have to write your JCL (Job Control Language) in such a way as to describe th
Re:Computers versus Programmers (Score:2)
But you'd better get crackin'. Microsoft'll have a patent on that as soon as the USPTO rubber stamps them.