[E-Lang] down with `define' (was: newbie syntax: picayune points from a prejudiced programmer)

[zooko@zooko.com]

 MarcS wrote:
> 
> Yes, your message made it. Thank you for sending it. I just didn't have
> anything very insightful to say in response :-) I do observe that I think
> popularity on slashdot is an interesting but skewed view of the world. In
> particular, my sense is that Perl and Visual Basic are far more popular than
> is reflected in the numbers you got there. This suggests the numbers on
> Python could be very wrong too (as in, Python is more popular than
> reported).


Python has a vibrant developer community, and has small but growing
mindshare in the greater market of hackers.  Contrast with Perl, which
has massive (but, I think, slowly shrinking) mindshare in the greater
market of hackers.


C, C++, and Java all have massive mindshare, and Java has (or at least
had, last time I checked) a massive and active community as well.


I don't know much about PHP, so I think (solipsistically) that it must
not have much mindshare, but to judge from the sourceforge numbers it
is extremely useful for the "dynamic web page" niche, and/or it has a
massive community that I'm not a part of.


Regards,

Zooko

P.S.  I think E should be aiming, like Python did, and Perl before it,
for the community first, and world domination second.