Hi,
Solar wrote:
Please provide proof that the cost of changing language outweighs the cost of attempting something with a language that wasn't designed for the kind of problem you're trying to solve.
(Hint: That's something you cannot prove for the general case, only the specific. Which is where your argument bites itself in the butt. Let companies, or departments, decide on what languages to employ. Dump your "one language should be enough for everything" pipe dream. Not going to happen. Same for "everybody should drive the same type of car because that would be more efficient for factories and shops". A shipping company will have a different idea of "standard" from a cab company from a father of three.)
Please provide proof that the cost of changing language does not outweigh the cost of attempting something with a language that wasn't designed for the kind of problem you're trying to solve.
Perhaps instead of trying hard to become offended you could be a tiny bit practical instead. For example, Objective C is a superset of C so we can delete C (and everyone that knows C can just say that know a subset of Objective C), there's so much overlap between the core features provided Java and C# that it's obvious at least one of them is unnecessary, and (for 80x86) the differences between AT&T syntax and Intel syntax are almost entirely superficial. That's 3 cases where "one less language" would make no difference whatsoever.
How about LUA vs. Python vs. Perl? Surely 2 of them can be deprecated. BASIC vs. Pascal? Pick one. Scheme vs. Lisp?
We could probably get rid of 50% of programming languages just by trimming the low hanging fruit.
Cheers,
Brendan