Programming languages, operating systems, despair and anger

Interesting programming language discussion being broadcast on the Delicio.us radar. REBOL is held out as a contrast to Google's "Go" language (and others). A few excerpts: I have been lately looking at Scala and yesterday spent some time looking at Pike / Thompson / Google et. al.'s "Go" language for systems programming. And Guido halts Python syntactic evolution before the job is done... And it fills me with despair and anger. Language designers in general: You are IN THE WAY. Go here: http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html ...then do us all a favor and don't resist the urge to fall on that wakizashi when your shame overcomes you. .... I think Carl Sassenrath may be the only person on the planet working in this area that accurately perceives the "pain" involved in general, everyday, practical programming and is *actually* trying to address it. ... [Further down in the msg thread] Third point: write a program that, when your phone is near your laptop at work, checks your security system at the house, determines via various heuristics whether there's anyone else in the family home, locks the doors remotely if they aren't and arms the alarm, and sends you a message (determined by where you're most active --- SMS if computer is idle, IM if not idle, copies e-mail in either case) indicated that it detected that the last person out (also determined heuristically by spanning machines to build a complex "context) forgot to lock the door. Also, if this person was your teenage son, sends him a text indicating that he's grounded, gets on his cell provider web page and "locks down" his account to strictly-family-and-emergency use, and automatically logs into the bank and changes the PIN number on his ATM card. (Where all does this program run? How does it orchestrate all this activity? Etc.) That *SHOULD* be simple. It should be TRIVIAL! These quotes are cherry-picked, of course. The entire thread is worth reading: *Programming languages, operating systems, despair and anger* http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html Regards, Ed

That was a great thread Ed :) Quoting Ed O'Connor <edoconnor-gmail.com>: