Re: Google, Python, and the future of AJAX applications

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

nobody has yet explained to me why we needed Java.  the ucsd p-system gave us
a workable virtual runtime which could easily have been tuned for web-browser
use.  additionally, p-code was source-language independent, meaning that BASIC
and FORTRAN and Pascal and Modula-2 and even LISP and Scheme could target it,
so we did not actually have to learn to live with another C-like syntax.  Java
and its syntax are painfully simpleminded, it's like programming with your 
hands superglued together.  Gosling, of all people, should be ashamed of this
since he knew from M-Lisp what was possible.  i suspect some sort of brain
damage in the intervening years, or perhaps Sun's corporate profit motive had
something to do with the awfulness of the Java design (including the stupid
limitations in the virtual machine model, the source language syntax, and the
runtime library.)

nobody has yet explained to me why we needed JavaScript.  its only similarity
to Java is in its name and a few C-like curly braces.  there's no purpose for
JavaScript that could not have been met by Java.  my theory is, programmers
are even lazier than they should be, and can't be bothered to compile stuff.
but if we needed an interpreted language to do what Java was supposed to do,
then in addition to torching Java and pushing it into the sea, we should have
given some serious consideration to Scheme, TCL, Perl, or even BASIC -- any of
which would have been prettier than JavaScript, and all of which were already
far more mature than any self-incompatible version of JavaScript has ever been.

nobody has yet explained to me why we needed PHP.  we had Perl already.  QED.

nobody has yet explained to me why we needed Python.  we had all kinds of
other languages at that time, and even though Perl wasn't object oriented as
of the year python came out, it became so shortly thereafter.

the lesson of all these languages, and the horrible regress known as C++ after
C, as compared to failed languages like Modula-3, is that if you come up with
something that is a legitimate improvement over whatever it's similar to or
based on, and would actually push the state of computer science and engineering
forward, people will laugh at you.  but if you come up with schlock that only
its author could love, which has no real reason to exist, no beauty or purpose
or advantage, then the world will beat a pathway to your door.

the only evidence at hand not explained by this theory is the success of Perl.
perhaps Perl escapes the categories of this system by having borrowed from
virtually every pre-existing language.

to think that the world's browsing population could be bothered to download a
5MByte python image but will never be offered the equivilent functionality in
the form of a 75KByte USCD P-system image, is so disheartening that it almost
HAS to be true.
-- 
Paul Vixie
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