Restrictive Tool Withdrawal

An Ode to having to toss favorite tools

Note - please WikiLink anything you can here!

(Ramblings from another discussion board that I plan to clean up later)

CeeLanguage is hardly the pinnacle of ProceduralLanguages or tools in general. As a HardLanguage, it is designed for *hardware* performance and providing predictable RunTime resource constraints, NOT SoftwareEngineering convenience. It is the "new assembler", with some of the same headaches that AssemblyLanguage had.

It's like comparing a Honda Civic to a Toyota RAV for off-road use. That the RAV beat the Civic for off-roading is not surprising.

If you wrote your PayrollExample in CeeLanguage without using the features of the DataBase much, even I would prefer your CeePlusPlus or CeeSharp version over it.

The lesson is that if you want software-engineering-friendly tools, then you have to get software-engineering-friendly tools.

You seem to be focusing too much on YOUR past when you do mental comparing. It's interesting to note that I grew up on ExBase (dBASE clones). Although the language was a bit clunky, it taught me the power of and productivity of DynamicLanguages combined with nimble-and-ready DataBase engines. I ran circles around the CobolLanguage, CeeLanguage, and PascalLanguage guys.

ObjectOrientedProgramming was 2 steps backward, with its stiff, hardwired taxonomies and difficult-to-navigate-sift-and-study navigational ObjectPointer pasta. Shifting most of the BusinessLogic to tables just plain made it easier to manage. Code was more or less a low-IQ foot soldier that simply carried out the features requested by the tables. The tables were the dinner menus and order slips, and the program code was the back-room cooks. Nimble tables are addicting and now I had to suffer withdrawal symptoms as the fad pendulum [TechnologicalPendulum] shifted back to ugly, tangled, static, code-centric paradigms. (I know, SmalltalkLanguage and PythonLanguage are more dynamic, but they are still essentially navigational in structure. DrCodd was smart to "fix" navigational. He is the genius, not me. I merely stumbled into his genius.)

I hear that LispLanguage fans suffer similar withdrawal symptoms when forced to use more restricting languages. Once you've been with Tabitha, Ol' Bertha just doesn't cut it.

See also FavoriteToolsAndProductivity, NavigationalVsRelational

CategoryOldSoftware