day 65
| tiny beans conquer world 2: forget paris |
consequence of invading "New Spain," killing just about everyone off, and plundering the gold and silver mines of Mexico, was the rapid, unintentional spread of chocolate beans. They spread to the old world like, well, er, chocolate! Chocolate had the capacity to mask the taste of poison: When Pope Clement XIV died in 1774, Horace Mann suspected that "his confectioner had unwittingly administered the poison while making a dish of chocolate." This all sounds familiar. Take the accidental spread of programming languages, and their sometimes unintended poisonous effects on the largest industry in the world. Sometimes an aphrodisiac, sometimes a poison, programming languages have side-effects, too. The last time anyone purposely tried to design a language and force it down everyone's throat was when the US Department of Defense picked the Green Language out of a French chapeau. Renamed Ada, in honor of Charles Babbage's gambling sidekick, this nouveau language failed resoundingly to get anyone's attention. In fact, it has been a poison in the halls of computer science for almost two decades. What happened? Back in the 1970s, programming languages were designed by technical people instead of marketing whizzes. Maybe if the DOD had had a bigger PR department -- one that understood the software economy -- things would be different. Forget Ada -- forget Paris (Ada was designed largely in France). Similarly, near-geeks like us are attracted by the aphrodisiac in Java. Java has semi-automatic garbage collection, multi-thread control, semi-security, JIT compilers, and now, Microsoft's blessing. We are being seduced by the promise of better living through better programming, but alas, this is like the demonic associations that came with the Marquis de Sade, who spiked chocolate pastilles during one of his parties, so he could, "enjoy the favors of his sister-in-law." Forget aphrodisiacs. Forget the technical alure of new programming languages. Nobody really cares about these things, because the real selling point of Java is that it is architecturally neutral. This is polite slang for "it will run on something besides Wintel." |
tiny beans conquer world
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