On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 6:33 PM, James H. H. Lampert
<jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Somebody from the anti-Cycle crowd derided The Cycle for being 45 (or so)
years old.
I agree that age is not a good criterion for judging whether something
is "good" or not. Especially when it's the *only* criterion. It's
often used in the other direction too: That older things are better
through the sheer virtue of "standing the test of time" or whatever.
My favorite counterexample against ageism within the context of
computing is Lisp, which is about 59 years old now. The fundamental
design of the language (practically no syntax, data and code are the
same thing) is timeless and arguably unsurpassable. Many "advanced"
features in newer languages (automatic memory management, recursion,
higher-order functions, closures, and more) were originally introduced
with Lisp.
I also cringe whenever someone uses the word "modern" when talking
about RPG. RPG is what it is. There's certainly newer RPG and older
RPG. Is the concept of ILE "modern"? Maybe. It reminds me of what Unix
folks have been doing since seemingly forever - compile source code
from various programming languages into compatible (linkable) "object
code" (analogous to ILE modules); link object code into executable
machine code. Procedures, encapsulation. All very old concepts dating
back to the '60s and definitely with strong penetration in computing
at large by the '80s. Wikipedia says GCC was introduced in 1987; ILE
in 1994. Calling this stuff "modern" is like using the term from the
art world (where the "modern period" extends roughly from 1860 to
1970).
So let's lay off about the age of things. If it's better because it
enables additional useful functionality, great. If it's better because
it's easier to read or more maintainable, wonderful. If it's better
because it makes it harder to screw up, or lets you focus more on the
task and less on the syntax, fantastic. I'll even take "better because
it's more fun". But better *because* it's newer? Uh, no.
When it comes to the RPG cycle, I think most of the subjective
measures can go either way. If someone finds it harder to understand
or maintain code that uses the cycle than code that doesn't, well,
then the cycle *is* worse. For them. But it's not worse because it's
older.
John Y.
midrange.com
