Justin,


I certainly agree that to become a better coder, it's good to experiment
with many languages and applications.  I'm not advocating that any given
shop should always rule out a project in a new (to them) language.  What I'm
saying is that the context of what you already know and what your
environment supports is an equally important part of the conversation when
choosing a language to develop in. 

-Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Justin Coyne
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You are a *pedantic* coder. So what am I?

Ian, I have to caution against taking the attitude "we only code in what we
already know".  Of course you are going to be able to hit the ground running
faster in what you are expert in.  Putting on the blinders is a great way to
become irrelevant in the technology sphere.  If you want to be a better
coder, there is no better way than to learn a new language, and actually do
a project in it. The insights you find in doing this will make you a better
coder when your go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before.

-Justin


On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Ian Walls <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Agreed.  Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Pick the 
> one that works best for your situation, factoring in not only what the 
> application needs to do, but your and your team's level of experience, 
> and the overall community context in which the project will live.  The 
> peculiarities of a given languages truth tables, for example, can 
> easily get washed out of the calculation when you consider what 
> languages you know and what platforms your institution supports.
>
>
> -Ian
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf 
> Of Ethan Gruber
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:45 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] You are a *pedantic* coder. So what am I?
>
> Look, I'm sure we can list the many ways different languages fail to 
> meet our expectations, but is this really a constructive line of
conversation?
>
> -1
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Justin Coyne
> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
> > I did misspeak a bit.  You can override static methods in Java.  My 
> > major issue is that there is no "getClass()" within a static method, 
> > so when the static method is being run in the context of the 
> > inheriting class it is unaware of its own run context.
> >
> > For example: I want the output to be "Hi from bar", but it's "Hi 
> > from
> foo":
> >
> > class Foo {
> >   public static void sayHello() {
> >     hi();
> >   }
> >   public static void hi() {
> >     System.out.println("Hi from foo");
> >   }
> > }
> >
> > class Bar extends Foo {
> >
> >   public static void hi() {
> >     System.out.println("Hi from bar");
> >   }
> > }
> >
> > class Test {
> >   public static void main(String [ ] args) {
> >     Bar.sayHello();
> >   }
> > }
> >
> >
> > -Justin
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Eric Hellman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > > OK, pedant, tell us why you think methods that can be over-ridden 
> > > are static.
> > > Also, tell us why you think classes in Java are not instances of 
> > > java.lang.Class
> > >
> > >
> > > On Feb 18, 2013, at 1:39 PM, Justin Coyne 
> > > <[log in to unmask]>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > To be pedantic, Ruby and JavaScript are more Object Oriented 
> > > > than Java because they don't have primitives and (in Ruby's 
> > > > case) because classes
> > > are
> > > > themselves objects.   Unlike Java, both Python and Ruby can properly
> > > > override of static methods on sub-classes. The Java language 
> > > > made many compromises as it was designed as a bridge to Object 
> > > > Oriented
> > programming
> > > > for programmers who were used to writing C and C++.
> > > >
> > > > -Justin
> > > >
> > >
> >
>