Re: Annual Oracle World Database Survey

Response interspersed.

Joel Garry wrote:

>As one who has had to switch among several languages an hour at times,
>I'd say you are underestimating switching costs. The steeper the
>learning curve of the language, the larger the costs. And if the
>languages are too close, there's confusion costs.
>

Methinks you misunderstood my point. It was not that the programmer needs to learn more languages ... but rather the compilers. That way programmers would need to learn fewer. For example Oracle's compiler can handle

SELECT 'A' || 'B' FROM dual;
it can also handle
SELECT CONCAT(''A','B') FROM dual;

So why shouldn't be equally able to handle:

END IF and ENDIF and FI? Why not IF }?

 From a technical standpoint, I don't think there is one.

>
>
>>Hey, hey! It is *my* fantasy! Sheez... ;-)
>>
>>Simply put Daniel, there's a lot very good features in the OO Pascal
>>language that Delphi implements. I would love to have some of the same
>>features in PL/SQL. It will enable me to do things much better and
>>cleaner using PL/SQL. Especially on the OO side and abstracting the
>>basic SQL layer. And no, Java does not do it for me. (after using
>>Pascal for almost two decades on everything from mainframes to PC's
>>what do you expect ;-)
>>
>>
>
>Gold plate that man's lead pipe, and call it a sceptre! :-)
>
>(Even though, through strange quirks of fate, I've never done
>Pascal...)
>
>jg
>--
>@home.com is bogus.
>"...very bad day, please don't take my picture." - REM
>
>

Personally I think Pascal was a much better language than C. The problem was that it was evangelized by Phillipe Kahn rather than Bill Gates.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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