Non-IT people looking at this smorgasbord of syntax quite understandably develop retinal glaze syndrome. They hope against hope that the whole thing will just goes away some day. The questions ripple out from the water cooler. 'Why do you guys in development want dozens of types of hammers when all you have are nails?'. 'Why doesn't everyone just use Java?'. 'Why doesn't everyone just use C#?'. And so on.
IT people are also inclined to see the diversity as bad or at least conclude that the benefits of a multilingual approach are outweighed by the costs. A consequence of this is that mono-lingualism is rife in commercial IT. Some of the uses I see Visual Basic being put to, or Java being put to - all because of a corporate edict of mono-lingualism - are downright sad. Sad because of lost opportunities - not only to deliver better product quicker, but also to deepen the knowledge of design and implementation techniques in the development team.
There is no single "silver bullet" - picking a hammer will make everything look like a nail, and not in a good way. What IT people ought to do is look at carpenters - or mechanics - and ponder what their way of thinking would translate to in those realms. Would you trust a mechanic who only used a screwdriver with your car?
Previous Topic
