It's funny that this is so popular, because I think it is probably the single most counterproductive thing written about software ever. Seriously.
As far as I can tell, the only point of speaking about the poor oppressed "verbs" is to screw up the thinking of the reader, making the reader feel sorry for them. It seems to have worked in some cases, but is there some other reason for it?
But what really annoys me is that the author is an illiterate. He doesn't know what nouns and verbs are. He says nouns don't do much, but of course its only nouns that do things; verbs are what nouns do. How can anyone read this without wanting to point out to the author that functions are nouns?
The only substance to his complaint is that Java seems unnecessarily verbose. Because some objects are one-trick ponies, it seems unnecessary to say "call" or "execute" or "doit", when that can be implied. But calling a function is calling a function, whether your language uses the word "call" or not. It is only because a function is a noun that it makes sense to use a function itself (rather than its output) as argument to another function or as a return value. You can use the function as an object precisely because the function itself is something different from calling (or if you prefer "executing" the function.
If we insisted on only using gerunds + "do", English would be a very strange world indeed. I imagine it would sound much like Java often does: "Eating is done by me of a sandwich.". Sometimes even "An eating is done [...]" :)
PS: The author is hardly illiterate. That's plain uncharitable.
<i>What's the subject of the previous sentence?</i>
"eat". Words used as words are nouns in that context. Like the word "eat". Like the word "word". When something is eaten, someone or something is doing the eating,
eat" doesn't eat itself.
I think it's fair to be a bit harsh when the entire essay is based on grade-school level misunderstanding of what nouns and verbs are.
As far as I can tell, the only point of speaking about the poor oppressed "verbs" is to screw up the thinking of the reader, making the reader feel sorry for them. It seems to have worked in some cases, but is there some other reason for it?
But what really annoys me is that the author is an illiterate. He doesn't know what nouns and verbs are. He says nouns don't do much, but of course its only nouns that do things; verbs are what nouns do. How can anyone read this without wanting to point out to the author that functions are nouns?
The only substance to his complaint is that Java seems unnecessarily verbose. Because some objects are one-trick ponies, it seems unnecessary to say "call" or "execute" or "doit", when that can be implied. But calling a function is calling a function, whether your language uses the word "call" or not. It is only because a function is a noun that it makes sense to use a function itself (rather than its output) as argument to another function or as a return value. You can use the function as an object precisely because the function itself is something different from calling (or if you prefer "executing" the function.