Relational vs nonrelational? It depends on the application. That's so obvious it needn't be discussed.

But I really, really hate SQL AS SUCH. It's an inefficient and overly complex interface that's full of security holes. Now there's a discussion worth having. But noooo...

Better late than never.

"You code in the language we tell you to, or you're fired."

Screw this, I'm gonna go look for another job.

So you go on dice.com...

"You code in the language we tell you to, or you don't get hired."

there's no way "the best tool for the job" can justify any of:

Java's badly designed core class library, with its lack of logical consistency and its abuse of structured exceptions.
C's preprocessor. There are better ways to implement constants and macros.
Multiple inheritance and operator overloading in C++. *
PHP semantics changing with each configuration.
Perl's horrible syntax. *
SQL's numerous security vulnerabilities.
LISP's non-procedural pretensions, and the contortions that result.

Nearly every language's dependence on its own class libraries, because interoperability is unthinkable. What's the point of living if you can't reinvent the wheel?

* "Well, just don't use those features!" Go tell that to the guys who wrote the code I'm expected to debug. If you can manage to track them down somehow. They're long gone.

A programming language that doesn't have any irritating flaws or omissions, that's all I want. Am I asking too much?

Okay, maybe two. One optimised for system programming to replace C, and another, higher level, for applications. Give them both very similar syntax and semantics, except where differences are called for by their different purposes.

Instead, we get dozens upon dozens of languages that are distinguished only by their various flaws, limitations and arbitrary differences in syntax and semantics. Why? Is no one even TRYING to get it right?

what for?

Source code is chock full of inherent structure. Why confine ourselves to flat text that has to be parsed? If we're going to invent yet another new programming language that forces us to throw out all our old code, then we may as well go for broke. Make it some binary format that encapsulates all the structure, work with using an IDE that understands the format and represents it visually. We don't even to all agree on the visualization.

Can it be said to have the quality of firstiness?

Sometimes satire ends up revealing more about the satirist than the target. And if the public turns out to be on the target's side, then the satirist ends up being perceived as mean-spirited and out of touch. Satire always draws blood, it's just a question of whose.

Never forget that Air America was a dismal failure.

...in time to change it to Google Millennium Edition.

I'm wondering why I see no conspicuous clustering at the trojan points of Earth and Venus. Are asteroids there harder to detect?

Suppose something was written to spread via both the Internet and USB autorun? The more vectors, the stronger it would be.

http://www.haystacknetwork.com/faq/

Sez it's got encryption too.