Journal Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: Is Obama the Visual Basic President? 11
No, this isn't yet another pro-life screed. Nor is it really about Obama. It's more about the job. The job of President, regardless of ideals, often gets hit with the reality of events. One might even say, like Visual Basic, it's an event-driven job; limited in scope and power to reaction rather than action.
This was very true for our past President- a man who went into office idealistic, and came out of office beat into shape by events for which he repeatedly became obsessed.
So I have to ask- can Obama avoid being a Visual Basic President? Maybe even become a deterministic C# President? Or a functional F# President?
This guy? (Score:1)
Java
Re: (Score:2)
+1 funny, +1 insightful
New Version (Score:2)
This one is VB.net.
Not ideal, but definitely an improvement over the old model.
OCAML (Score:2)
What he says is hard to interpret. Sometimes 'yes' and sometimes 'no'. Very definitely a maybe.
Re: (Score:2)
Or Haskell: he has values, but those values will be determined later.
4GL circa 1985 (Score:2)
I suspect Obama is all those alleged 4GLs that were just around the corner around 1985. You know, all those peachy-keen up-and-coming languages that would allow us to describe the problem to solve rather than how to solve it... languages that would greatly advance what the average non-technical person could do with computers, and take most of the drudgery and difficulty out of programming.
You know, all those languages that sounded awesome on paper, but somehow never managed to materialize.
Obfuscation (Score:1)
God help us if he adopts the obfuscation of Perl. One hopes he has the speed of C, but lacks the security vulnerabilities that can be caused by lazy programmers. However, considering the assembly of his cabinet, one hopes that the reality of the situation registers with the man. He needs to float above the acrimony, use the correct words, and avoid bad soundbytes.
Re: (Score:1)
I see you have compiled a program for him to execute while in office.
Will you GOTO Washington: to link it to his main project?
Re: (Score:1)
Linking it may be difficult, if his program isn't compiled properly. He can place all the decorations he wants on his function, but if his arguments aren't of the right type, he'll be thought in error. Worse, he might be cast into the gray areas of undefined behavior, with his base overridden and his class virtually questioned. If worse comes to worst, he might be considered abstract, and require reinterpretation. However, if he applies the right templates, he could conceivably parse with a simple dynam
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe he should use the --strict options when invoking General Constitutional Compiler and have some proper code review instead of using the users as unknowing alpha testers
Obama is like C++ (Score:1)
Ultra-powerful, but so opaque that pretty much no one really knows it very well at all. It does all kinds of things for you, and to you, but that are done behind the scenes, that it's hard to keep track of it all, and if the default is what you really intended/want.