[xquery-talk] adding comprehension to imperative languages or vice-versa

[Ihe Onwuka]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 7:23 PM, daniela florescu <dflorescu at me.com> wrote:

> >
> > As far as what's "better", I think that there are really two different
> questions here: what's "better" in The Right Way sense, and what's "better"
> in a "how do you get people to use this" sense. For the latter, there's no
> doubt in my mind that the way there is to get existing mainstream languages
> (which are all imperative at heart) to adopt more declarative goodness,
> including comprehensions/queries, as a subset - it's a much gentler
> transition for existing users of those languages, and more importantly,
> it's like a new instrument magically appearing in a toolbox that they
> already use daily - at some point they're bound to pick it up and use it
> even just out of sheer curiosity. It's much harder to get someone
> interested in a completely new language in comparison.
>
> As I said in my previous email.
>
> Now in 2015 I realize that developers have their “favorite” language, and
> making them change it’s close to
> impossible, so the optimal is to give them better tools to do their job in
> THE language they are more productive in.
>
> So if this is C#, or Javascript, or whatever…. let it be.
> (ever crossed your mind why in an EC commerce site when you sort on
> price/sometinh, it GOES BACK TO THE SERVER most of the time to
> do a simple sort on 20 products  !???? Sounds stupid no, ? well, that’s
> because Javascript doesn’t HAVE a sortby ….so …)
>
> It’s better for those imperative languages to HAVE a sequence
> comprehension then NOT to have it. It makes the developers
> in those languages (who otherwise wouldn’t have changed anyway…) more
> productive….
>
> Now, the fact that 90% of developers like comfort and/or are learning
> impaired and cannot learn something new
>  does NOT mean that ALL developers are lazy and/or learning impaired and
> cannot learn something new…..
>
>
True, but you will still have sociological problems, with many of the old
guard protecting their turf and pitching up to code reviews and the like
objecting to the "new" code because it's "hard to understand" or it's
"non-performant".

For those who CAN learn something new, or for the fresh new students with
> blank, fresh new minds…..well, teach them something better
> and more productive.
>
>
What students? Students don't typically enter university these days as
virgin programmers (and haven't for a long time). They pitch up believing
they know how to program and believing they know what programming languages
they should be taught in. So professors have to run the gauntlet of why are
you teaching me this weird language instead of Java etc and how is this
going to help me get a job. I know the right answers to these questions but
universities are under pressure from students in this regard.


> And that would be (according to me..) the OTHER way around: a language 95%
> declarative +  5% imperative.
>
>
Erik Mejier says this is not enough.

 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2611829
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