This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: hammers and nails Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

It's nice to be placed in the same category with Paul Graham, but I think I'm being a little misunderstood. Here's what I mean:

There are some software development pundits from the world of obscure languages who have lots of really smart stuff to say, like Paul Graham and James Robertson, whose hatred of popular languages just has to be glossed over if you expect to be able to read them. I think that they're so offended that their language of choice (Lisp, Smalltalk, or whatever) never hit the big time that they just can't see other, more popular languages all that rationally. I know they'd tell me that they hate Java or C# or whatever because they handcuff your productivity when compared to the obscure language that they favor, and they may even be right.

It's not a matter of hating C# or Java - I recognize them as rather large scale improvements over C++, the programming language from hell. What I'd like to see is less auto-decision making going on. Instead of "well of course we'll use Java", I'd like to see people actually think. I've seen people using EJB and three tier set ups for problems that could best be solved by Access, for instance. What I mostly object to the sheer volume of hammer/nail thinking in the IT industry.