语言之争reload

Without understanding functional programming, you can't invent MapReduce, the algorithm that makes Google so massively scalable. The terms Map and Reduce come from Lisp and functional programming. MapReduce is, in retrospect, obvious to anyone who remembers from their 6.001-equivalent programming class that purely functional programs have no side effects and are thus trivially parallelizable. The very fact that Google invented MapReduce, and Microsoft didn't, says something about why Microsoft is still playing catch up trying to get basic search features to work, while Google has moved on to the next problem: building Skynet^H^H^H^H^H^H the world's largest massively parallel supercomputer. I don't think Microsoft completely understands just how far behind they are on that wave.

Still. CS is proofs (recursion), algorithms (recursion), languages (lambda calculus), operating systems (pointers), compilers (lambda calculus)

But JavaSchools also fail to train the brains of kids to be adept, agile, and flexible enough to do good software design (and I don't mean OO "design", where you spend countless hours rewriting your code to rejiggle your object hierarchy, or you fret about faux "problems" like has-a vs. is-a). You need training to think of things at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously, and that kind of thinking is exactly what you need to design great software architecture.

You may be wondering if teaching object oriented programming (OOP) is a good weed-out substitute for pointers and recursion. The quick answer: no. Without debating OOP on the merits, it is just not hard enough to weed out mediocre programmers. OOP in school consists mostly of memorizing a bunch of vocabulary terms like "encapsulation" and "inheritance" and taking multiple-choice quizzicles on the difference between polymorphism and overloading. Not much harder than memorizing famous dates and names in a history class, OOP poses inadequate mental challenges to scare away first-year students. When you struggle with an OOP problem, your program still works, it's just sort of hard to maintain. Allegedly. But when you struggle with pointers, your program produces the line Segmentation Fault and you have no idea what's going on, until you stop and take a deep breath and really try to force your mind to work at two different levels of abstraction simultaneously.

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Java的意义在于降低了Programmer的门槛。不再是great guy的专利。
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确实如作者所说。
Java不足以区分、也不足以造就great programmer。
就是说，只是一个Java Programmer，不可能成为 great programmer。只能成为 Architect, Application Fast Writer 等中游角色。
Java的意义在于降低了Programmer的门槛。不再是great guy的专利。

发表意见之间请至少看清楚，别人说了什么.否则提出来的观点只能贻笑大方 I would even go so far as to say that the fact that Java is not hard enough is a feature, not a bug, but it does have this one problem. Joe并不否认，Java在工业界的角色。但是他真正要说的是,Java不够难，作为工业语言不错，但作为学校的教学语言，就忒差了。学校应该用指针和递归这类东西把真正的程序员筛选出来。对指针（代表系统底层）和函数编程（代表高层抽象）的学习是脱胎成优秀程序员的必经之路。
他认为没有经过C和Scheme这样的语言训练，基本上不算是学过计算机科学.
当然很多人可能连计算机科学的正规科班训练都不屑一顾。是的，我们周围的确有很多半道出家的编程爱好者.他们在工业领域担当的角色无可替代.但是职业角色的无可替代性并不等于从事这个职业的人是无可替代.一台数码照相机缺了那个部件都不能工作,但是，他的塑料金属外壳可以用中国货，印度货，马来西亚货，他内部的电路可以用日本货也可以用韩国货，但是高质量的镜头除了欧洲货外你在市面上根本找不到任何替代品.这就是greater programmer和mediocre programmer的区别.因此当你感到把C程序员称为greater programmer是对自己职业一种蔑视的时候，那就因该想想，你到底是要成为一个不可替代的程序员，还是要去从事一个不可替代的职业。

对指针（代表系统底层）和函数编程（代表高层抽象）的学习是脱胎成优秀程序员的必经之路。

如果，计算机领域按照“科学”、"工程"、"技术"来分。
greater programmer是我们不可企及的。要称得上greater programmer的，估计都来自“科学”界。
而我们是搞技术的，我们的目标应该是优秀的程序员。无论你用什么语言，无论你学过什么，没学过什么，无论你是科班出身还是一介草莽，你只需要在自己的领域中作出好东西，就是优秀的程序员。