to redesign or not ... that is the question

[Robert Hartman]

In article <1991Jun12.223042.18281 at lth.se> bengtl at maths.lth.se (Bengt Larsson) writes:
>In article <4137 at optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman at cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
>>Although I don't want to sound _too_ critical, I think the designers
>>of Python and Perl have done a disservice to us by developing new
>>languages with nothing particular to recomend them over other
>>languages that are already widely available and well known.  The only
>>effect these languages will have is to further fracture the progamming
>>community.
>
>I indeed think this is too critical. What harm does it make? Especially for
>a scripting language (which is interpreted)? 

This was my initial reaction also.  However, I think that there's a lot
of truth in what Mr. Gudeman is saying.  It is not always advantageous to
re-invent the wheel.  However, those old logs probably wouldn't get good
mileage or wear, or give a very smooth ride if used on a modern car.

The art of applying edits to large blocks of text is still young, and
that each new stab at it will yield some insights.  No one argues that
sed, awk or perl are clean, well-formed languages.  That in and of
itself leaves the way open for attempts at a more elegant approach.

C and Pascal have succeeded because they were clean-enough, well-formed
enough, and robust enough to perform the function they were intended to.
Text has evolved for thousands of years.  It is very complicated.  I
suspect that it will take a large amount of trials, errors, and analysis
to eventually come up with a well-formed language to deal with it.

Meanwhile, we are going to have to put up with the resulting
inconveniences and the polarizations around them.  My only hope is that
each language innovator preserves the functional strengths of all the
previous attempts.  After all, people are good at learning new syntax.
Just make sure that I'll still be able to do what I can do now.  That's
all I ask.  Ultimately, the language that survives and grows will be
the one that does that most elegantly.

-r