On 26 Oct 2002, Simon Cozens wrote: : [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Lazzaro) writes: : > But our version of "understandable" still means a steep, steep learning : > curve. : : It's worse than that; for practitioners of many languages, the learning : curve has a 180 degree turn. : : Quick: what are the bitwise operators in Java, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, : Perl 5, PHP, Ruby, and Perl 6? Which of these languages do we want to : draw programmers from? : : Someone will now argue that bitwise operators aren't used very often anyway. : Great, so we make a change that bites (NPI) people when they least expect : it; that makes it all OK.
No, it doesn't make it all OK, but that's why somebody's getting paid to make the hard decisions. It's my job to balance out the short-term pain with the long-term gain. I appreciate that we have a responsibility to current programmers. I also appreciate that we have a responsibility to programmers who haven't even been born yet. Above all, I have an appreciation that what I'm trying to do here is, in fact, completely impossible. That won't stop me from trying. Larry
