> The more reasonable assertion is that it takes good people to get good results regardless of the quality of the tool.
> Acolytes are uncomfortable saying this because it also destroys the negative case, which is, it would be impossible to write quality software in a previous generation language.
Not impossible, just a lot harder. It's as if you're thinking in equations that are true/false, while I'm thinking in statistical distributions.
Have you used Macintosh System 5? How about Windows 3.1? Those were considered quality systems at the time, but standards are up, way up since then.
Why are modern systems better? Is it because we have better developers today? -- I don't think so. It took a "real" programmer to write quality apps in Pascal for early Macintosh systems, or apps in C for Windows 3.1.
I think the difference is in the tooling that is available to us -- and modern programming languages (and libraries) are surely a very large part of that tooling.
If you disagree, I challenge you to find a seasoned modern desktop app developer who can write a high-quality app for MacOS or Windows that looks and functions great by modern standards and doesn't use any modern languages or directly invoke any non-vendor libraries built after the year 2000. It's possible[0]. They may be able to do it, but you must certainly concede that doing a great job requires a much better developer than the average modern desktop app developer to be able to work well under those kinds of constraints.
That's what I mean by "raising the floor" -- all software gets better when languages, libraries, and tooling improve.
> Acolytes are uncomfortable saying this because it also destroys the negative case, which is, it would be impossible to write quality software in a previous generation language.
Not impossible, just a lot harder. It's as if you're thinking in equations that are true/false, while I'm thinking in statistical distributions.
Have you used Macintosh System 5? How about Windows 3.1? Those were considered quality systems at the time, but standards are up, way up since then.
Why are modern systems better? Is it because we have better developers today? -- I don't think so. It took a "real" programmer to write quality apps in Pascal for early Macintosh systems, or apps in C for Windows 3.1.
I think the difference is in the tooling that is available to us -- and modern programming languages (and libraries) are surely a very large part of that tooling.
If you disagree, I challenge you to find a seasoned modern desktop app developer who can write a high-quality app for MacOS or Windows that looks and functions great by modern standards and doesn't use any modern languages or directly invoke any non-vendor libraries built after the year 2000. It's possible[0]. They may be able to do it, but you must certainly concede that doing a great job requires a much better developer than the average modern desktop app developer to be able to work well under those kinds of constraints.
That's what I mean by "raising the floor" -- all software gets better when languages, libraries, and tooling improve.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30269329/creating-a-wind...