Re: Object Rexx to become Open Source
From: Al Dunbar [MS-MVP] (alan-no-drub-spam_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/23/04
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Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 11:52:35 -0600
"Gerry Hickman" <gerry666uk@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:%23Xi4tJitEHA.2596@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Hi Al,
>
> > underneath. In fact, I would go so far as to say you are not
particularly
> > objective about this. Of course, it can be difficult to be objective
about
> > an issue in which one almost religiously believes in the absolute right
of
> > his point of view. Please don't take offense at that, as none is
intended.
>
> Yes, I see what you mean, but the "religious" belief wasn't just picked
> out of thin air. I tried to state reasons as to how those beliefs came
> about as we went along.
Understood and agreed - I guess the issue with me is that the style of
argument tends to make it seem primarily an emotional one for you rather
than a rational one. That is no skin off my nose, I just point out that one
tends to lose some credibility by this technique.
<snip>
> Don't forget I started out in the VB world. In
> fact it raises an interesting point. If standards don't matter too much
> as long as the "job is getting done", and if "ease of use" is important,
> then tell me what happened to "Visual Basic" and VBA??
They are not the only programming platforms that have disappeared or become
less prevalent for various reasons. In addition to your viewpoints on why
this is so for VB and VBA, we also have the penchant MS has for re-inventing
the environment by introducing new technologies that supplant the older ones
rather than building on them.
> You could apply the same arguments to those two as you apply to
> VBScript, but both Visual Basic and VBA are dead! Microsoft saw the
> bigger picture, and now provide multi-language support.
>
> > above is one such case. Some tools are so easy to pick up that one can
get
> > somewhere by using them poorly - and then never improving much because
of
> > the bad habits that result. Believe me, I have seen some abysmal
examples of
> > scripting, whether with vbscript or batch. There is something to be said
for
> > the concept of "discipline" in coding, even at the expense of making the
> > platform picky about what you code.
>
> Yes, that's one thing I like about case sensitive languages; when it
> comes to ADSI and WMI properties and methods you really don't want the
> case mangled. Most experienced VBScript'ers follow the case correctly
> anyway. JScript can bring some extra "self docunmenting" too in that
> methods MUST have brackets and "collections" are distinct from "arrays"
> when it comes to enumeration. It makes it much easier to visualize
> what's going on at the COM layer.
Personally, I still find the need to be "sensitive" about the case of
aDSpath constants and etc. to be unrelated to whether or not there is case
sensitivity in the programming language itself, whether applied to its
keywords or variable names.
> One other thing you can do in JScript is comment out huge blocks of code
> with /*...*/, I can't remember if this is possible in VBScript?
No you can't, yet I'm not sure that that is a disadvantage for someone who
has not used that feature. In any case, the ?*...*? technique is one that
requires some self-discipline, as it is possible to use it to introduce
syntactical errors if one is not careful. One needs also be careful about
trying to comment out huge chunks of code that already contain /*...*/
comment blocks.
With vbscript I sometimes use "if false then - end if" for the purpose. I
can then change the false to true to enable the block without losing the
begin and end markers. Syntactically this helps ensure that the block
structure of the code remains consistent, while allowing nesting of these
"commented out" sections.
> > Something that recently occurred to me is this: are you pro PERL/jscript
> > over vbscript mainly because those languages are more standards-bound,
or
> > because they are IYHO, intrinsically better? If because they are
> > intrinsically better, would you flaunt standards if they went in what
you
> > felt to be the wrong direction. If because they are standards-based,
would
> > you migrate to a platform that you felt was muddle-headed if the
standards
> > people happened to switch that way? I'll be really interested in your
> > answers to these questions.
>
> This is an extremely good question! In fact I think it's what drove
> Microsoft for years. Let's look at a classic example ... the web.
>
> [tongue in cheek mode]
<snip humourous strawman argument... :-) >
> [/tongue in cheek mode]
>
> Sounds good? But that's the day Microsoft's blinkered vision of the
> world came crashing to a sudden halt, and everything about IE4, IE5 and
> IE6 was all about how well it complied with "W3C this", and "ECMA that".
> For years their browser was the most standards compliant on the planet
> and it's still pretty good to this day.
>
> As for PERL/JScript being "better", yes I genuinely believe they are
> better. However JScript under WSH is only really accessing the same COM
> interfaces as VBScript so it really comes down to the language itself.
>
> PERL is on another level alltogether; no one disputes it's more
> powerful, the main problem (under Windows) is that it's not built in,
> and that's the main reason I use JScript instead. I also find JScript
> more "modern" than PERL (at least up to 5.x). But PERL isn't just about
> making calls to WSH, it's got a huge API built-in (albeit in a tiny EXE
> file) which means you make low level calls when you need to (a bit like
> C). You can also plug-in all kinds of crazy stuff - e.g. you want to
> output to PDF? No problem! Just get the PDF module. You want your
> server's performance graph sent to a web browser as a GIF and refreshed
> every two seconds?, again just get the "graph" gizzmo. You don't have to
> "install" the PERL modules like you do with ASP ActiveX and they don't
> write to the Windows registry or limit you to only using that specific
> server, you just put the module with your code and off you go.
You have somehow managed to neatly avoid answering my ("extremely good", to
quote a reliable source!) question while at the same time seeming to answer
it. You have the dual benefits of (apparently) a better language and one
that is more standards-compliant on which to base your arguments. My
question to you (not to Microsoft) was: were this not the case, would you go
with an inferior language because it was standards-based, or would you
flaunt standards to go with what you felt was a superior language? The world
awaits your answer, as, regardless what you say, it will weaken *one* of
your two anti-vbscript arguments.
> > I tend to agree, not so much because I see anything particularly wrong
with
> > .NET (please let's not take that branch in this thread), but because
each
> > new scripting/whatever paradigm promises so much, only to be discarded
when
> > the next one comes along.
>
> The main headache for me at the moment with IT is the constant changes.
> In years gone by, an upgrade was ALWAYS better than what you had before.
>
> Now I find the "update" is often just to make extra money for company X
> and many times they break earlier useful functionality or add annoyances
> like pop-ups or constant visits to the "upadate" website.
Well that is certainly one annoyance we can readily agree on...
> > Yes, I do know what you mean. But I somehow manage to get use out of
> > dictionary objects and vbscript classes, because, once they have been
built,
> > they provide a more flexible platform for coding than the (hated!:-)
> > function-type interface. I'm not saying it's better than JScript, just
> > better than vbscript *without* those things.
>
> You're right, once you set up the classes it becomes far more elegant.
See, you can be objective about vbscript if you try hard enough! ;-)
> > Actually, I shudder at the thought of making an obvious fix in open
source
> > code only to find out it actually screwed something else up...
>
> No, it's really not that bad, you can always test it on your local box
> before you copy it to the server anyway. It's saved me a few times, and
> you often find the authors will implement your changes in the next
> release - it's great, and you even get to chat to the authors.
As an interesting side-note, a new colleague of mine asked me earlier this
week whether or not he would be out of line to make a presentation on a few
possible uses of open source in our organization at an upcoming meeting.
Having encouraged him to do so, I am looking forward to an interesting
discussion. Whether or not it will fly at all in our strictly (MS)
standards-based organization is perhaps a moot point, but avoiding such
discussion altogether when the opportunity arises wouldn't be healthy.
/Al
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