

Return of the Statically Typed Languages - lackbeard
http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000483.html

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mxh
I didn't much agree with this guy's post, but here's where he _really_ lost
me:

"Javascript is on the verge of becoming part of the assembly language family,
and toolkits like GWT are making sure that this will happen before too many
developers join the pool of low level language victims. I'm sure you can
relate to that stigma."

In the first place, JS is a neat little language that, with a few (okay, a
lot) more libraries could easily serve as a replacement for Perl, Python,
Ruby, etc. Categorizing it as 'low level' or 'assembly' -like seems like a
terrific mistake.

In the second place, the assumption that someone would rather work with
Java/GWT than JS seems a little provincial. His point seems to be that _he_
would rather code Java than JS, GWT makes that possible so .... everyone will
use the tools he prefers. I think there's a flaw in there, somewhere.

In the third place, what 'stigma' is associated with the 'assembly language
family', and/or what makes someone a 'victim' of a 'low level' language?
Everything has its place, and while it's only rarely useful, a background in
ASM is an excellent foundation for a programmer's knowledge. ASM is also
useful for solving the occasional nasty bug, understanding security
vulnerabilities, working with bytecode, and reverse engineering for fun and
profit.

The third point may be minor, but it really poisons the whole article, for me.

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sanj
Strangely, just yesterday, I got this email in my junk account:

Subject: My name is Cedric Beust and I caused you to get unwanted email

Message:

Hello,

I am Cedric and I blog on beust.com.

I have allowed everyone's email to be exposed throught my sloppy, weak
security. I work at Google and this secruity lapse reflects poorly on Google
too of course.

If you received this email, then your private email address has been scrapped
from my weblog and posted to <http://www.newsreadersite.eu/?page=562>

This error on my part cannot be undonw of course. The mailbots have already
scrapped your email address and now your address is runined forever. I hope it
wasn't important to you.

I like to talk about important things like computer languages and architecture
on my weblog, but I know so little about security that I allowed all of your
addresses to be scrapped.

Sorry I am so lame,

Cedric

~~~
estall
I got the same email. And I found out it was true. I googled the email address
to which it had been sent and in fact, it was online at
<http://www.newsreadersite.eu/?page=562>

Which goes a long way towards explaining why I have started getting SPAM on a
previously clean email address.

The original author is correct, if you are a system architect at BEA and then
you move to Google and you still can't keep a blog site secure, it is pretty
lame.

------
Hexstream
If I'm going to read an opiniated piece, it might as well be insightful.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, this guy is clueless. I could do a point-by-point on how he's wrong, but
I don't have time to nitpick everything. What about this: _Emacs users need to
evolve?_ To what?

There is nothing else like emacs. Sure emacs lisp could use some help (some of
us are working on adding coroutines for parallelism), but that doesn't mean
it's dead. If anything else were like emacs but better, we would all ditch it.

Summary: this guy is fucking clueless. He's an IDE-wielding weenie that has
only ever used Java. Great.

------
stcredzero
Method name renaming was licked in Smalltalk, even in things like specs (which
predated XML, but served much the same purpose.) So long as everything's an
object in the image, you're fine. (Excepting goofy things like constructing
message sends at runtime.)

Things like properties files and pickled objects that left the image -- you
aren't covered then. But there's little you need those for that you can't do
in-image.

------
mlinsey
Some of those observations were interesting, but I'm not sure how they fit
together, and I didn't come away with a clear understanding of the author's
arguments for statically typed languages...

~~~
jrockway
His argument boils down to "I like Java, and saying that it's only around for
political reasons is wrong. After all, I like it! Yeah, it's true I've never
bothered learning much about anything else, but still... my opinion is somehow
relevant because I have a blog."

