bimbart@hera.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Bart Demoen) (06/12/91)
In <6209@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> R. O'Keefe writes: > I think it would be an excellent thing if more of the people > concerned with the Prolog standard understood the language they > were standardising. In particular, one would expect the > formal specification of Prolog to be _about_ the same size as > the formal specification of Scheme. I am afraid I can only understand this the following way: people involved in the formal specification of Prolog do not understand the language they are standardizing Is this really what he means ? If not, it would be nice if he were be very precise and clear about the fact he doesn't mean this ? Bart Demoen
jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (06/15/91)
In article <3876@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be> bimbart@hera.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Bart Demoen) writes: >In <6209@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> R. O'Keefe writes: > >> I think it would be an excellent thing if more of the people >> concerned with the Prolog standard understood the language they >> were standardising. In particular, one would expect the >> formal specification of Prolog to be _about_ the same size as >> the formal specification of Scheme. > >I am afraid I can only understand this the following way: > > people involved in the formal specification of Prolog do not > understand the language they are standardizing He meant that _some_ of them do not understand the language they are standardizing. One also gets the impression that the formal specification is rather large. That would be a shame, because Prolog is a fairly small language. As for comparison with Scheme, it may be that the formal spec for Prolog covers more of the language than does the formal spec for Scheme. (I do not mean to imply that the formal Scheme spec is for a subset. But there are many things, including such trivia as the member function, that have not been explicitly formalized.)
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (06/15/91)
In article <3876@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be>, bimbart@hera.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Bart Demoen) writes: > In <6209@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> R. O'Keefe wrote: > > I think it would be an excellent thing if more of the people > > concerned with the Prolog standard understood the language they > > were standardising. In particular, one would expect the > > formal specification of Prolog to be _about_ the same size as > > the formal specification of Scheme. > I am afraid I can only understand this the following way: > people involved in the formal specification of Prolog do not > understand the language they are standardizing Then I suggest that you re-read what you quoted. To say that it would be a good thing if MORE of the people understood ... is to make three claims: that some of the people *DO* and that some of the people *DON'T* and that it would be good if some who don't learned better. > If not, it would be nice if he were be very precise and clear about > the fact he doesn't mean this? The English I used _was_ very clear and precise. In strict point of fact, two of the people who were on the BSI committee before the ISO committee was formed TOLD me they didn't know Prolog. Things have definitely got better, but not better enough (yet). Let me add one further point: it is painfully obvious from many of the documents distributed as part of the ISO Prolog work that several of the people associated with that project do not have an adequate grasp of any operating system outside UNIX/MS-DOS/Mac, to the point that they continue to take for granted as portable and reasonable to include in the standard things which are nothing of the kind. I'm not going to name names, except to say that I don't mean anyone at BIM and I don't mean Roger Scowen, who has in fact shown that he _does_ understand some of the problems. -- Q: What should I know about quicksort? A: That it is *slow*. Q: When should I use it? A: When you have only 256 words of main storage.