|
They are treated religiously because people on one side know better, and the people on the other side take it personally / feel threatened. I'm not going to use names in this example, lest I start a religious war right here — though I'm sure you can figure them out — but think of how much damage a poor but easy to learn programming language can do to the software industry as a whole. The most obvious issue is that the poor language makes it easy to do things the wrong way (costing time, money, patience, and other scarcities, later on, for the sake of a quick-win now — a false economy, in other words). This argument is mostly agreed on already. The less popular argument though, is that lowering the barrier to entry isn't necessarily a good thing. It brings in both less experienced, and just lesser programmers. The former has a place in the industry, just not the place they're being given. Everyone has to learn somewhere, but it shouldn't be in a place that gives equal weight to them as the more experienced developers. The latter need baptism by fire. I'm currently learning difficult-as-all-hell programming language X. I'm sure it's not difficult at all for the majority of the programmers that know it, but for me, it's a struggle. I see it as a trial by fire though: The more I make it through, the more I'm changing in the ways I think about some areas of programming. If the barrier was low, there would be no struggle, and without struggle there is no learning. |