May 12 2008
Failure to Adapt Considered Harmful…
Gustavo Duarte, a programmer and blogger in Colorado wrote a very provocative article recently entitled Language Dabbling Considered Harmful where he reasons on why working, professional programmers should, more or less, stick to the languages where they have been successful and not try to get involved with new languages that come around:
Learning new programming languages is often a waste of time for professional programmers. It may be a fun waste of time (i.e., a hobby), but it’s a waste nonetheless. If you do it for pleasure, then great, but profit is scarce. Pointing this out among good programmers is heresy: even the pragmatic programmers, whose teachings are by and large excellent, suggest we should learn one new programming language every year. That’s rubbish.
— Gustavo Duarte
In response, I suggest two great quotes, the first comes from Computer Security World in 1977:
“Within an EDP Center, programming languages should be standardized. If it’s COBOL, PL-1, or FORTRAN, so be it. And the bright young mavericks with their ALGOL, PASCAL and god-knows-what-else will just have to conform.”
— John M. Carroll in Computer Security, 1977
Amazingly, Carroll is now a Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. I’ll bet he’s sorry he ever uttered those words. They seem so incredibly narrow minded in light of what we know about IT as a profession, don’t they..? Imagine what the world would be like if anyone had listened to him….
The second quote is by H.G. Wells :
New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises: ‘Why then are you not taking part in them?’
Together, these two quotes define the polar extremes of computer science, IT as a profession and the gestalt of the Internet itself: One wants to stop the world because change (and new ideas) can be hard and doesn’t always lead to a new and better result; the other wonders why someone would ever be swayed by people who belittle those who dare to try to invent a potentially better future.
Duarte seems like a smart guy; but he’s really off in the weeds on his general thesis. As professionals in IT (as well it should be with professionals in any area) we adapt or we die. I know which side I’m on…
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