{"id":30,"date":"2007-11-23T21:58:19","date_gmt":"2007-11-24T02:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steve.vinoski.net\/blog\/2007\/11\/23\/absolutes\/"},"modified":"2007-11-23T21:58:19","modified_gmt":"2007-11-24T02:58:19","slug":"absolutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steve.vinoski.net\/blog\/2007\/11\/23\/absolutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Absolutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite bloggers is Reg Braithwaite<\/a>. He writes extremely well, and every one of his posts, even when he posts only links, is worth reading.<\/p>\n

Judging from this comment<\/a> Reg made on another blog, it seems that he’s being accused of being an absolutist, in this case regarding static typing. In that comment he writes:<\/p>\n

I am going to challenge you now. I am not trying to provoke a fight, I honesty want YOU to go away and say hmmm. Why is it that you are trying to paint me as such an absolutist, that when I say \u201cI like static typing but I\u2019m currently achieving my personal goals with a dynamic language\u201d that I must be against static typing?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and he summarizes his comment with this:<\/p>\n

But I would encourage you to consider the possibility that others, such as myself, are not as rigid in their mindset. I\u2019m very proud of the work I\u2019ve done using some extreme \u201ctype torture\u201d in C++ to impose constraints on programs. I\u2019m also very proud of some of the work I\u2019ve done in Ruby. I have no difficulty embracing each in its own way.<\/p>\n

After all, one roadhouse can host both kinds of music, Country AND Western.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reg’s comments really struck a chord with me; not only do I completely understand where he’s coming from, but I especially like the Blues Brothers<\/a> reference as well. :-) Seems like anytime I post about my preferences for REST and dynamic languages, I receive a number of blog comments that are nothing more than unfriendly flaming rants accusing me of absolutism. It kinda makes me laugh, given that I use 3, 4, or 5 different programming languages almost every day, and can develop a wide variety of systems, especially distributed systems, using a fairly broad range of different techniques. Simply put, I’ve been in this career for way too long to be an absolutist, except perhaps for one thing: I absolutely believe every developer should be strong in multiple programming languages and multiple approaches because there’s no single language or technique that can do it all.<\/p>\n

Actually, now that I think about it, here’s a couple more absolutes:<\/p>\n