Comparing programming languages to religions

Courtesy of Slashdot comes this tongue-in-cheek comparison of various programming languages to specific religions. Yes, Mormonism is in the mix:

C# would be Mormonism – At first glance, it’s the same as Java [equated to fundamentalist Christianity], but at a closer look you realize that it’s controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it’d probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn’t discriminate so much against you for following it.

Of course, the real irony is that for a lot of programmers, programming languages and related technologies are religions, with the term “religious wars” used freely to describe the fierce disputes over which language/technology is better.  I’m old enough to have lived through (and participated in) the wars on algebraic vs. RPN notation (calculators), assembly language vs. high level languages, BASIC vs. C, C vs. Pascal, C++ vs. everyone else, and so on.

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from Pat Eyler pointing out that Yukihiro Matsumoto (aka ‘Matz’), the principal author of the Ruby programming language, is an active Latter-day Saint, which thing I did not know.  This, of course, means that the author of the comparisons missed an opportunity for a cool inside joke by equating Ruby (instead of C#) to Mormonism.  ..bruce..


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