Avinash Meetoo

Why are there so many programming languages?

13 July 2007 By Avinash Meetoo 12 Comments

According to the Encyclopedia of Computer Languages, people have created more than 8500 programming languages over the years.

Most of the languages have never become mainstream (read Ghost in the Machine for a list of 12 languages that couldn’t take off – I don’t agree with the Haskell part as I think that it has enormous appeal and potential especially for concurrent programming)

Now for the bigger question that I’m asked from time to time:

Q: Why are there so many programming languages?

After deep thoughts, I can now answer:

A: Because a programming language is just a medium of expression and different people express themselves differently…

A corollary might be (but I think to think more about that):

Different people express themselves in different programming languages. Students, being people (after all…), also therefore express themselves in different programming languages. Hence, programming should be taught in a programming language-independent manner in order to cater for all students…

(Edited on 13/7/2007 at 23:17 MUT)

(I guess most of you have recognized the Tower of Babel by Bruegel)

Analyzing the survey data…

9 July 2007 By Avinash Meetoo 15 Comments

Thanks to David, Fezal, Bharat and Selven (and taking into account my own data), I’ve collected more than 300 measurements over the week. I owe each of them a nice lunch at Lotus and a drink :-)

As a reminder, we all downloaded a 100kb and a 1000kb file from the US and Europe three times per day (hence 12 readings) for the whole week (including Saturday and Sunday).

Now that the data collection process has finished, I am now embarking on the analysis phase. I’ll use my limited knowledge of statistics to prove (or, perhaps, disprove) the following: Mauritius Telecom is not giving us the bandwidth we are paying for and, consequently, we are being robbed of the opportunity to participate in the Web 2.0 revolution.

Of course, I’ll keep you informed. I’m setting myself the deadline of Friday 20 July to finish writing an academic paper containing this analysis.

Thanks, once again, to all those who have helped me.

Very erratic ADSL connections…

5 July 2007 By Avinash Meetoo 64 Comments

Thanks to David Channe Vy, Fezal Ackburally and Inf (what’s your real name?) and coupled with my own data, I am getting a pretty interesting picture of our ADSL connections.

Here are some observations:

The minimum bandwidth is at 22:30 (I got a record low of 1% of expected bandwidth last night)
The average bandwidth (during the whole day and for all of us) is only 44.37%. This clearly indicates that we are NOT getting what we are paying for. 44.37% is not best effort!
Sometimes (and generally at 8:30 when everyone else is stranded in his/her car on his/her way to Port-Louis) we get peak bandwidths of 75-80% of what we are paying for. Where is the missing 20%?

Anyway, let’s continue with the data gathering process. Thanks to those who are helping.

5 July update

Same behavior as previously. I consistently get an average of around 65-70% of what I’m paying for for my MyT 256. David Channe Vy consistently gets an average of only 35-40% of his ADSL 512. Are MyT users being prioritized?

Bharat, Selven and Fezal are also sending me data.

I think that Saturday and Sunday will give us some interesting raw figures to analyze.