I was reading the entry by Phillip Greenspun that's been floating around the
blogsphere today comparing Java to SUVs. Interesting, but can you figure out
what in the following quote caught my eye?
A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be
harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or
Perl. People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget
will use tools such as Visual Basic (controlled all the machines that decoded
the human genome). But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good
about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of
power for handling problems of tremendous complexity.
VB controlled all the machines that decoded the human genome? I'd never heard
that, but there's at least
some evidence
on the web that it's true. (Really, it's one of those things
that's just "too good to check.") Does that mean we can take downstream credit
for all the things we learn from the human genome? "Visual Basic Finds Cure For
Cancer?" I guess we'll just have to wait and see...