
The Seven Deadly Sins of Arc - nreece
http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/18438.html
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mechanical_fish
This is pretty funny. A mixture of cargo-cultism ("Arc must not be real
software because real software must be available at a public version control
system and have automated tests" -- I guess nobody ever told Linus Torvalds,
who claims to have spent years managing Linux development via emailed
patches), Java envy ("Arc is not a real language because it has no built-in
OOP system"), intensely personal pet peeves ("Arc is failing because PG's
version numbering system consists of a series of numbers that increase
monotonically, _but not in the way I expect_ ") and just plain missing the
point:

Arc is not a mature language, nobody is asking you to use it, and it cannot be
behind schedule because there _is_ no stated plan or schedule for its
inevitable World Domination. It is -- and I say this as one who has the utmost
respect for great and serious toys -- still a toy. It is young, and it is
enjoying its youth. So, when you play with it, try to at least _act_ like
you're having fun!

If and when the language takes off, there will be plenty of opportunity for
"polishing", feature freezes, official releases, bug databases, security
teams, FAQs, books, patents, trademarks, O'Reilly Arc conferences,
_Enterprise_ Arc conferences, legacy users, FUD, poorly constructed
benchmarks, schisms, forks, flames, backstabbing, bitter debates about
backwards compatibility... and so on, and so forth. At which point you will be
_pining_ for the glorious days when Arc was young and fun and had yet to grow
up into a Serious Language with real-world consequences.

~~~
cchooper
I'd like to add a couple more points:

1\. Arc isn't just immature. pg made it quite clear that it's _not even
finished!_

2\. pg has also explicitly said that he isn't interested in it becoming
popular, which goes some way to explaining why it isn't.

3\. pg announced some five years ago that Arc wouldn't be 'especially object-
oriented' and gave his reasons why. Exactly why was this a surprise to anyone?

------
stcredzero

        1, 2 - Uh, it's a work in progress.  Please read!
        3 - He's writing it himself.  So?  Projects don't have 
            to *start* using version control.  Hopefully they 
            will grow to where they really need it.  
        4 - This is the only valid criticism
        5 - It's meant to be minimalist.  Please read!
        6 - Same sort of shallow objection as #3
        7 - Code is not meant to be English.  "no" is just as 
            good as "not"
        8 - It's a work in progress.  Please read!

