OT2: The 'realness' of languages

[Stephen Barncard]

>
>After I told her I used Revolution for its rapid-development and 
>cross-platform capabilities, a subtle change occurred in the 
>conversation.
>She began talking about how I might help with the design, but that 
>of course when the design was finished a software firm would take 
>over the development (presumably in some 'real' language like C).  I 
>didn't bother to tell her I COULD write in C, Java, PERL, PHP and so 
>on, because it would be extraordinarily painful to do so.

Why not tell her that then, if you felt you lost anyway? The only 
answer to fight the myths is education.

This is similar to the 'loudness wars' in the music business, where 
untrained amateur 'mastering' engineers and forced professionals are 
making LOUD CDs, even though they know they're trampling the dynamics 
and it makes the music worse.  Loud CDs use 'hypercompression' - not 
data compression but audio compression in the digital realm, which is 
at first interesting but eventually tedious to listen to. (think 
Ricky Martin and Britany for extremes)
The myth is that these records sound 'better' on the radio, but they 
really don't. But the myth really goes back to the vinyl days, that 
had limitations: if it was cut too soft it would be enveloped in 
noise. On the other hand there was a limit to how much time you could 
put on a disc. Louder records were shorter in length, quieter were 
longer.  That's why Miles Davis's 'In A Silent Way' is so quiet. 
Almost an hour playing time!

>
>Has anyone else run into this issue?  Do you dodge the 'what is it 
>written in' question?  How can we raise the profile of Revolution as 
>a 'real' language?  (Never mind what religion it might resemble!)
>
>George
>

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stephen barncard
s a n  f r a n c i s c o
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