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I had to look up religion on webster to check exactly what it means.

Main Entry:

re·li·gion

Pronunciation:

\ri-?li-j?n\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back — more at rely

Date:

13th century

1 a: the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices3archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

— re·li·gion·less adjective

Probably a better definition would be a set of irrational beliefs which have absolutely no scientific /  logical basis. But then again webster could not have a definition like that since it would piss off too many people.

Religion in the programming world raises its ugly head time and time again, mainly in the threads to show why language X is better then language Y.

Ussually the reasons given are rather comical. Well more people use language X. Yah well 100 years ago most people rode arround in horse drawn buggies, does that mean that a buggy is better then a motor car ?

Or language X is very easy to learn. You can learn it in 24 hours. It has a simple syntax. Yepper that is a good reason to use language X. Shit how come  Mario Gabriele Andretti  do not drive a tricycle. It is much easier to learn how to drive a tricycle then it is operate a racing car.

It is best that you know many languages. Each language is better for certain tasks. PHP is good for web programming, but IMHO lacks when it comes to the properties that perl and python have when it comes to general purpose tasks.

Looking at quirky languages like lisp or scheme can teach you a lot. You learn a whole different perspective of doing things. One of the most narrow minded attitudes people have is if they can not see an immediate use for the knowledge, they consider it a total waste of time. It has been said that you should learn one new language a year. It is like an investment often you will not use this knowledge for many years but the investment will payoff 10 fold easy.

People often tell me, how much computers have changed in the last ____ years. The truth of the matter is that they have changed very little. Most of our so called modern programming languages have thier roots from fortran and lisp which are over 50 years old. The only thing that has changed is that computers are smaller and faster. The truth of the matter is that men like Bool, Turing, Babbage envisioned a machine that could crank out massive amounts of calculations, and most importantly could be programmed to solve the task at hand. All of us have them temptation to buy a book on programming since it is “new”, “modern” talks about the new language ______ . The truth of the matter is most algorithms where developed over 30 years ago.

We all have the natural tendency to think that what ever tools we are using are the best. I try to keep and open mind, but often my own prejudice sets me back. Just remember when you look at the merits of certain languages it is not a religion. The only hell you will experience is one of your own creation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 1:07 am and is filed under coding, mental states. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.