Quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius
...but that doesn't explain why people continue to use it (and even worse, tell other people to use it).
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Laziness, inertia, etc. Take your pick.
Telling other people to use it is probably just not knowing any better. Personally, I try to tell people to use HashMap instead of Hashtable even though I've never done it. And I usually mention (if prompted), that there are better alternatives to Vector. But if I need to crank out a quick utility or something, the chances are good that I won't take my own advice. I've done it a hundred times before, I know the syntax, and I know it will work for what I'm doing.
I would hope that professional programmers / developers are better about this sort of thing. I think you mentioned that you were a student, so you probably fall into this category because of your intended profession. I'm an ex-engineer turned DBA (many, many moons ago) who happens to program occasionally. These days, mostly I write things to make my life easier. I've written enough code over the years in enough languages that I can usually figure out how to write anything I need. But no one would ever accuse me of following programming best practices. I suspect there are a lot of people out there like me. Maybe that explains some of what you're seeing.
Later.