arnold2@violet.berkeley.edu (mchawi) (06/11/88)
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PASCAL = BABY FOOD FORTH = HIEROGLYPHICS LISP = PERVERSION COBOL IS DEAD
FORTRAN = OBSOLETE PL/1 IS DEAD BASIC IS FOR STUPID PEOPLE dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) (06/13/88)
From article <10800@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, by arnold2@violet.berkeley.edu (mchawi): > Summary: > C RULES (shortened) > PASCAL = BABY FOOD FORTH = HIEROGLYPHICS LISP = PERVERSION COBOL IS DEAD > FORTRAN = OBSOLETE PL/1 IS DEAD BASIC IS FOR STUPID PEOPLE I rarely flame, but this I think needs a flame. Let it be noted that EVERY language ever invented was designed to fulfill a need. Pascal was written to be a teaching aid - it shows the different relationships of scoping, has strict typing (something that is important to find out about :-) and many other advantages. Forth - this is a threaded interpretive language, or as I always conceive it, an incremental compiler. Forth programs ARE hard to read by C only people (myself included) but for real time control applications it blows C clean out of the water. Lisp, as the Acronym says is for "LISt Processing" - if you think lisp is a perversion you should try artificial intelligence in an imperative language (Lisp is demand driven - it only works something out when it has to) In particular it is possible to cause C to crash or infinitely recurse by doing things that are trivial in LISP. COBOL may be dead, but at the last count about 60-70% of code written in the U.S. was written in "COmmon Business Oriented Language" COBOL allows a good programming team to run off a GL package in less than no time flat because it provides all the tools (Where in the C library is the subroutine that does a polyphase merge sort on a database file). Fortran is not obsolete, it was designed for "FORmula TRANslation", i.e. for numerical analysis it is superior to C in many respects: Complex is an implicit data type to name just one. PL/1 I will not comment on as I know nothing about it. And BASIC. "Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". As it says, it is for beginners. I would submit that there was a time when BASIC would have been suitable for the original poster (or for me for that matter) because we were all beginners at some time. How many C novices do you know can be writing meaningful programs 1/2 an hour after turning on the computer. Some people I know couldn't even get the compiler to work, let alone run the program. Just because a language is not suitable for the application you have in mind DOES NOT MEAN THAT there is anything wrong with it. -- dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough +---+ | +-+-+ ....... !harvard!cca!lakart!dg +-+-+ | +---+
cjl@ecsvax.UUCP (Charles Lord) (06/14/88)
More drivel like this and I'll start missing JJ...
spenser@ficc.UUCP (spenser aden) (06/18/88)
[This is a cross-posting from comp.lang.misc ... I forgot to cross-post to] [the newsgroup of origin. -Spenser ] In article <158@lakart.UUCP>, dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes: > From article <10800@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, by arnold2@violet.berkeley.edu (mchawi): > > Summary: > > C RULES (shortened) > > PASCAL = BABY FOOD FORTH = HIEROGLYPHICS LISP = PERVERSION COBOL IS DEAD > > FORTRAN = OBSOLETE PL/1 IS DEAD BASIC IS FOR STUPID PEOPLE > > I rarely flame, but this I think needs a flame. Let it be noted that > EVERY language ever invented was designed to fulfill a need. > [text deleted defending many of the above mentioned languages] > PL/1 I > will not comment on as I know nothing about it. I use the PL/M programming language exclusively here in my job to develop real-time applications, and must say that it is quite useful as such. PL/M is a subset of PL/1, and while not nearly as versatile as PL/1, it is extremely handy and easily learned/managed. It may not have the system interfaces that C does, and I can't manipulate the system as easily, but IT DOES IT'S JOB EFFICIENTLY. And that is the point anyway, isn't it? I have also been exposed, in a much more limited way though, to the full PL/1 language, and will vouch for it's immense ability once it has been mastered. It does take a little work to learn though (it did for me at least ... it might not for another :-). And I have seen PL/1 used for real-time apps also, so let it be known that it is not dead! In fact, about a year ago I read an article about PL/1 in a magazine like _BYTE_ or _PC_ (I regret that I can't remember what mag), and it discussed the pluses of PL/1 and the fact that it seems to have been re-discovered as a very powerful language. Anyway, I agree with David wholeheartedly ... every language had and has it's purpose, and while others may do the same things, as long as it does it efficiently and is easy enough to manipulate, I think it should be respected for it's purpose! -- =========================================================================== S. Spenser Aden ..!uunet!nuchat!sugar!ficc!spenser Any opinions expressed above, unless explicitly denoted, are mine alone and do not reflect those of my employer. My wife won't claim them either ...