My last post was intended to be pretty tongue-in-cheek, but I’m guessing that a lot of people won’t get my dry humor, so I better explain.
First of all, I wasn’t complaining about Objective-C or saying there’s anything wrong with it. I love the language. It’s different, but it grows on you. Nor was I complaining about ActionScript.
If anything I was poking fun at the religiousness that finds its way into programming languages. The concept that strict typing is good, and vital, and you couldn’t possibly live without it and any language that isn’t strictly typed is a joke. Sure, strict typing has a lot of good points and great benefits like those I mentioned in the previous post. But dynamic typing certainly has its benefits too. Get off the “right” and “wrong” in programming. Languages are different. They do things differently. Different languages have different strengths. I’ve heard a few people suggest that eventually we’ll all be programming in a single language that will do everything. I think that’s incredibly naive. There are certain tasks you really NEED to do in a low level language like C of C++ or even lower like assembly. And there are a lot of other things that you absolutely DO NOT want to waste time programming in C for. I doubt there will ever be one language to rule them all.
So if different languages are different, why do so many insist on saying that any language that isn’t like their own favorite language is “weird”, or just “wrong”, or “can’t be taken seriously”? Granted Obj-C is different enough that I think just about everyone encountering it for the first time says a big WTF? But again, it starts sounding like religion. Unfortunately, I have run into this a lot from Java programmers encountering ActionScript. A while back I did a post where I had the audacity to suggest that perhaps ActionScript could live without abstract classes and singletons. Damn. I got slammed for that. Apparently abstract classes and singletons form the very underpinnings of any object oriented language and any language that doesn’t have them, or isn’t striving to get them immediately is just a joke. I mean how could you even consider building an application of any kind without abstract classes or singletons??? It obviously cannot be done.
OK, more dry humor. That’s sarcasm folks. That was the attitude of some of my commenters, not my own feelings. That’s the kind of people I was poking fun at in my last post. Well, by now you’re either laughing, or you hate me. Cheers! 🙂