gsg0384@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (01/05/89)
Hi,
I read some interesting article about Turing in Dec 88 issue of 'Communications
of ACM'. It seems that Turing Plus is the language for me according to
the authors' claim.
1. Can Turing have a chance to survive the competition among C++,
Modula2 or -3 ?
2. Is there a comercial Turing compiler for Mac or for AMIGA yet?
Thanks.
Hugh gsg0384@uxa.cso.uiuc.eduwgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) (01/05/89)
In article <117400001@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, gsg0384@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > > I read some interesting article about Turing in Dec 88 issue of Communications > of ACM. It seems that Turing Plus is the language for me according to > the authors' claim. > 1. Can Turing have a chance to survive the competition among C++, > Modula2 or -3 ? > > Hugh gsg0384@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu I do not know if Turing will survive, but I have a suggestion about how it might be done: C and C++ have UNIX locked up right now, and MS-DOS and probably OS/2, so one must look to the future. If the Turing people produce a very good implementation for the Mach operating system, and if they do a sales job on Steve Jobs and get him to include it with each NeXT system, and if the NeXT system takes off in a big way in the academic market, they MIGHT have a slim chance of being successful. I do not see any other strategy for them that has a realistic chance of success. Any other suggestions? -- Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant rutgers!liberty!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh Unisys UNIX Portation Center P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121 "The unexamined life is not worth living!" Blue Bell, PA 19424 -- Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ
johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) (01/06/89)
In article <448@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes: > If the Turing people produce a very good implementation for Mach, >and if they do a sales job on Steve Jobs and get him to include it >with each NeXT system, ... Too late, NeXT already has a major commitment to Objective C. It might be noted that by allowing a copy of Objective C to be included with each NeXT box, the Objective C people have considerably increased their chances of being taken seriously in the computing world. -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something You're never too old to have a happy childhood.
pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) (01/06/89)
1. Give away the compiler to educational institutions, or make it very cheap.
2. Write an Introduction to Programming book that (a) surpasses all the
Pascal books in clarity, (2) really shows off the language; that is,
one can't just translate the "best" Pascal book into Turing - instead
the book must be reorganized along the lines of Turing's strengths.djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) (01/06/89)
From article <6854@june.cs.washington.edu), by pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis): ) 1. Give away the compiler to educational institutions, or make it very cheap. ) 2. Write an Introduction to Programming book that (a) surpasses all the ) Pascal books in clarity, (2) really shows off the language; that is, ) one can't just translate the "best" Pascal book into Turing - instead ) the book must be reorganized along the lines of Turing's strengths. Are colleges and universities still teaching intro to programming in Pascal? Really? About what percentage, I wonder.
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/07/89)
I just read the turing article. I don't know... the syntax is full of little arbitrary glitches (for example, using a token for the last character of a string that can't be stored anywhere), the seperate compilation handling is pretty hairy (if submodule A accesses something in a program that isn't passed to it, that program has to be available when the module is compiled), and the I/O handling is built in to the language (the language is otherwise so nice, and perfectly capable of providing the capabilities in a standard library... just as 'C', Modula, and so on do). I got the impression of a more advanced teaching language, rather than a replacement for Modula, 'C', and so on... It's got a lot of nice ideas, but doesn't hang together all that well. I, for one, would much rather have an efficient implementation of ICON. Now that's a breakthrough language. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.
bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) (01/08/89)
In article <1147@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes: +------------------ |From article <6854@june.cs.washington.edu), by pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis): |) 1. Give away the compiler to educational institutions, or make it very cheap. |) 2. Write an Introduction to Programming book that (a) surpasses all the |) Pascal books in clarity, (2) really shows off the language; that is, |) one can't just translate the "best" Pascal book into Turing - instead |) the book must be reorganized along the lines of Turing's strengths. I beleive such a book exists, written by John Holt if I remember correctly. I don't recall the name or publisher, but it's the standard intro text at the University of Toronto. |Are colleges and universities still teaching intro to programming in |Pascal? Really? About what percentage, I wonder. +------------------ Humber College just switched from teaching Pascal to C last year in their Computer Engineering section. They also replaced VMS with BSD 4.3 Unix on their 750. The Business sections still teach Cobol, I beleive... Cheers, -- _ _/\ Bruce Becker Toronto, Ont. \`o O| Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu \(")/ BitNet: BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET ---mm-U-mm--- "The OSF is suffering from Penix envy" - Rocky Raccoon
norvell@csri.toronto.edu (Theodore Stevens Norvell) (01/09/89)
In article <201@becker.UUCP> bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) writes: >In article <1147@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes: >+------------------ >|From article <6854@june.cs.washington.edu), by pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis): >|) 1. Give away the compiler to educational institutions, or make it very cheap. >|) 2. Write an Introduction to Programming book that (a) surpasses all the >|) Pascal books in clarity, (2) really shows off the language; that is, >|) one can't just translate the "best" Pascal book into Turing - instead >|) the book must be reorganized along the lines of Turing's strengths. > > I believe such a book exists, written by John Holt if I > remember correctly. I don't recall the name or publisher, > but it's the standard intro text at the University of Toronto. > That's Ric Holt. The full reference is R.C.Holt & J.N.P.Hume, Introduction to Computer Science using the Turing Programming Language, Reston (Prentice Hall), 1984. It's been a while since I read it cover to cover, but it is a very clear introductory book. When I was tutoring courses that used this book, I don't remember having to clarify any material that was in it. It covers almost all of Turing, missing only a few nifty things like the bind declaration and alias prevention (these are covered in an appendix). It predates Turing Plus and so covers none of the Turing Plus extensions. There is a second book aimed at graduate level or upper-undergradate level students. It is R.C.Holt, P.A.Mathews, J.A.Rosselet, & J.R.Cordy, The TURING programming language: design and definition, Prentice Hall, 1987. It contains justification for Turing's design and also contains its formal definition. I don't know the price of the vax, 370 or sun compilers, but I would be suprised if they were costly. Perhaps someone from csri or Holt software could comment. A Turing (proper) interpreter for MS-DOS is $60 CDN and is distributed by Holt Software of Toronto.
mason@tmsoft.uucp (Dave Mason) (01/12/89)
From my reading of the Turing, Numerical Turing, and Turing Plus documentation, and Mini-Tunis Operating System, and writing a few Numerical Turing programs, my answer is "I certainly hope so!" Numerical Turing in particular really impressed me (a compiler & O/S hack) as extremely nice for developing Numerical Analysis type programs. Turing Plus is a considerable improvement on my (and a fair number of other people's) previous favourite concurrent programming language: Concurrent Euclid (developed by the same folks). This semester I will be teaching my Operating Systems course using the Mini-Tunis O/S and Turing Plus. The student group project will be porting Mini-Tunis to run on a bare virtual VM/370 machine. If anyone has questions about how the students relate to & like the language, send me mail in a month or so. In article <2658@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >I just read the turing article. I don't know... the syntax is full of little >arbitrary glitches (for example, using a token for the last character of a >string that can't be stored anywhere), Just like C? > the seperate compilation handling >is pretty hairy (if submodule A accesses something in a program that isn't >passed to it, that program has to be available when the module is compiled), No, a stub file of the program has to be available. How else can you have a type safe compiler (which Turing claims to be (Turing-Plus has escapes where required))? >and the I/O handling is built in to the language (the language is otherwise >so nice, and perfectly capable of providing the capabilities in a standard >library... just as 'C', Modula, and so on do). You could of course do it that way if you want, just ignore the builtin I/O & call your own routines. For small programs there is no question but that it is convenient to have it built in. >I got the impression of a more advanced teaching language, rather than a >replacement for Modula, 'C', and so on... It's got a lot of nice ideas, >but doesn't hang together all that well. Whether it succeeds in displacing much of the C market is for history to decide, but it definitely SHOULD displace Modula, it is a MUCH nicer & cleaner language. (It almost makes B&D look good :-). It is also a dynamite teaching language. It is the only procedural/ imperative language that I think should even be considered for intro teaching (I have a personal soft spot for Scheme, but that's a different religious war). And the nice thing is that it scales quite smoothly into large scale software engineering projects! UofToronto teachs Turing to first year Engineers as well as Computer Science students. They claim to get engineers who see how computers may even be useful to them, and even understand a little about programming! Dramatically better results than previously achieved with Fortran to the Engineers. ../Dave (Disclaimer: I am a part time graduate student at UofT, but I've NEVER been known to let details like that get in the way of my calling things the way I see them. I really think Turing is a good language.)