Post by @tante@tldr.nettime.org

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/117486167780988609

This is also not just about JS. The same kind of pattern applies to many more fashionable platforms.

Just as COBOL got a bad rep by people who didn't fully grasp its qualities, context and value we now see another workhorse language being shat on so people can validate their choices.

tante

@tante@tldr.nettime.org 47 min. ago

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@cR0w/117485345192131258

I learned to program with PHP and literally _nothing_ on the planet comes even close to being that easy to program and deploy.

Which makes "I run JS on Node with 57373 unchecked dependencies to do basic CRUD and PHP is just so bad and dumb" look really juvenile.

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ArneBab

@ArneBab@rollenspiel.social 10 min. ago

@tante My pet-peeve is #Fortran, because I had so taken up the badmouthing about it that it took me three years into my PhD to realize that it’s not actually bad.

https://www.draketo.de/english/free-software/fortran

And now with the extended type errors of Python, keys that are not lists but only iterables, and declaration of types up-front, Fortran looks better and better in comparison.

And it’s about factor 20 faster, with nicer syntax for math.

Writing a commandline tool in Fortran | Zwillingssterns Weltenwald | 1w6

Mo, 04/10/2017 - 22:37 — Draketo Here I want to show you how to write a commandline tool in Fortran. Because Fortran is much better than its reputation — most of all in syntax. I needed a long time to understand that — to get over my predjudices — and I hope I can help you save some of that time.1 This provides a quick-start into Fortran. After finishing it, I... 1w6

thomasmey

@thomasmey@social.tchncs.de 29 min. ago

@tante Trust me COBOL has no qualities..m

publictorsten

@publictorsten@mastodon.social 33 min. ago

@tante BTW: what happened to Perl?

tante

@tante@tldr.nettime.org 31 min. ago

@publictorsten Perl kinda died because it's a bit clunky (and PHP was just better for most things) as well as the Perl community being somewhat hostile towards new users.

Christian Peach

@chpietsch@fedifreu.de 20 min. ago

@tante @publictorsten And the Perl leaders killed Perl when they decided that the successor to Perl 5 would be totally backwards-incompatible. They corrected this mistake too late and call Perl 6 Raku now.

Sebastian Zdrojewski

@en3py@onlyarts.social 34 min. ago

@tante I feel like sometimes it's some sort of cult: "you can't use this/that language, because it's not modern"

Write a code that can be ported for 20 years, and we can talk. I am very rigid on this, but a company can't afford to waste money to rebuild a critical application every year with something "fancier"

The issue IMHO is that many developers don't understand what they work on, and what is the purpose of their job. But probably it's me being old/conservative.

tante

@tante@tldr.nettime.org 32 min. ago

@en3py it's the difference between being an engineer in a company that needs to actually provide value or hacking in some startup that might or might not ever make money.

Sebastian Zdrojewski

@en3py@onlyarts.social 29 min. ago

@tante agreed.

Perhaps it's also the reason why IT (as a whole) is no longer solving problems: too many fancy tools, very few of them solving true business problems.

But hey, some consultant from the big4 said this will be the solution (he/she doesn't understand the problem).

tante

@tante@tldr.nettime.org 27 min. ago

@en3py I think there also is too much "hacking" in IT and too little "engineering". IT loves navel gazing instead of doing the actual work of talking to people in order to understand their real problems