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What, again?

What, again?

Posted May 2, 2007 7:43 UTC (Wed) by ms (subscriber, #41272)
In reply to: What, again? by ncm
Parent article: The Rise of Functional Languages (Linux Journal)

As I noted earlier, functional languages may be thought of as alternatives to scripting languages. ... Java and C# may be thought of as particularly cumbersome, ugly scripting languages.

Yay. Let's talk about cars, they're everyone's favorite meaningless analogy. "A car can be though of as a an alternative to a blimp." Suddenly it's all so clear...


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Cars

Posted May 2, 2007 17:18 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

There's nothing wrong with cars. Cars get lots of people where they need to go. When you need a fleet of truck-and-trailer rigs, though, or container ships, or earth-movers, a car just won't do.

Python and Perl, by this analogy, are Toyota sedans. Erlang is an SUV. They're perfectly capable, and they get the kids to soccer practice better than anything else. Just don't confuse them with what you need for heavy work. It's easy to miss how much serious work is being done in C++, just as you don't much notice cargo ship traffic. You would certainly notice if it ever stopped.

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