[REBOL] Re: Tuples - Was Pair! thread
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 8-Feb-2002 8:43
Hi, Maarten,
Maarten Koopmans wrote:
> There is no link between benevolent dictators and success.
> There is no link between open source and success (Delphi, VB, ...)
>
Let me suggest that there's not a single yardstick for "success".
There are certainly some measures by which some people would call
Visual Basic a "success". There are certainly different measures
by which Perl is considered a "success".
An open marketplace allows the consumer to use her/his own criteria
to select the product(s) that meet her/his needs, rather than forcing
all consumers to live with the criteria of a single authority. I
consider that to be a system-level "success".
It will be interesting for us to look back in ten years and see
whether there are still languages called "Perl" and "Visual Basic"
being widely used, and -- if so -- what resemblance they bear to
the artifacts of those same names in 2002. But even long-term
viability of a label is only one measure of success. Almost
nobody uses Algol for serious development any more, but it placed
a number of crucial computing concepts into play which are
fundamental to current programming practice, thus earning for its
creators significant standing in the history of computer programming.
Almost nobody remembers the name of the leading wool merchant in
London during the late 1660's, but almost every educated person
around the planet knows of, and benefits from the work of, Sir
Isaac Newton.
How's that for success?
-jn-
--
; sub REBOL {}; sub head ($) {@_[0]}
REBOL []
# despam: func [e] [replace replace/all e ":" "." "#" "@"]
; sub despam {my ($e) = @_; $e =~ tr/:#/.@/; return "\n$e"}
print head reverse despam "moc:xedef#yleen:leoj" ;
