> There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.
My old boss used to say this thought terminating cliche whenever I encountered a problem with PHP. It's a rather useless form of binary thinking, since it completely ignores scale and severity.
It's similar to statements like "all politicians are bad", which put the likes of Nick Clegg in the same bag as, say, Pol Pot. It's counter-productive to any meaningful discussion.
I also think using any quote as a thought terminating cliché is flawed. In that case I wouldn't blame the quote though, but the person using it. (I assume your boss probably had an interest in terminating thought. Perhaps the project was invested in the language and it was just not feasible to change? Perhaps he didn't have an answer to your valid criticism? Just speculation...)
In most cases I have encountered people uttering this quote they were using it as a mere observation of the statistical fact that a large group of users will inevitably lead to a larger amount of complaints. And the conclusion was usually something like:
"Don't blindly disregard a language, because many people hate it. Always take a closer look if the tool is up to the job."
My old boss used to say this thought terminating cliche whenever I encountered a problem with PHP. It's a rather useless form of binary thinking, since it completely ignores scale and severity.
It's similar to statements like "all politicians are bad", which put the likes of Nick Clegg in the same bag as, say, Pol Pot. It's counter-productive to any meaningful discussion.