Existing Code
If you look at entire applications then, sure, the
amount of overlap would be zero. But 99% of the time, that is not how existing
code is used. Blocks of code that perform certain tasks are what are re-used
most of the time. There would be a HUGE amount of overlap with these
blocks.
Auto-Translation
We discussed this weeks ago as an
example of the absurdity of copyrighting APIs. The auto-translation program
runs a great risk of violating the API copyrights. If it does then we are back
to square zero. If it doesn't then Google could just add an auto-translator to
the front end of their compile tool-chain and Oracle's API copyrights would be
all but meaningless.
You also forget the elephant in the
room:
Developer Head Space
Good developers hold the APIs they are
using in their heads. The API calls can just stream from their fingers.
Forcing them to use two different APIs to do exactly the same thing in very
similar contexts would violate one of the most fundamental rules of programming.
It would not make things 2x harder (because you now have to keep twice as much
in your head), it would make things 100x harder or worse because of the
tremendous risk of confusing a call in one set of APIs with the matching call in
the other set of APIs.
If your solution to this problem is
auto-translation, then let's let Google add an auto-translator to their compile
tool chain and jettison the API portion of this trial.
--- Our
job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts than the one we’re in
now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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