djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon) (01/24/88)
For a humorous but insightful classification of programming language designers take a look at the book, "Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language," by William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, Academic Press, 1975. His classifications are: 1) Cowboys 2) Wizards 3) Preachers 4) Boffins 5) Handymen 6) Repairmen These classifications are explained in sections I.5 and I.6 of the book. It is very entertaining to fit your friends and famous computer scientists into these groups as you read. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP: watmath!dragon!djsalomon Internet: djsalomon@dragon.waterloo.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------
eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene N. Miya) (01/26/88)
In article <4777@watdragon.waterloo.edu> djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon) writes: >For a humorous but insightful classification of programming language >designers take a look at the book, "Lucid, the Dataflow Programming >Language," by William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, Academic Press, >1975. His classifications are: 1985 (a small typo) > 1) Cowboys > 2) Wizards > 3) Preachers > 4) Boffins > 5) Handymen > 6) Repairmen I walked down the hall to my Branch library and got the book out. Yes, I forgot about this discussion, it's very good. I also recommend it. From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA "You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?" "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize." {uunet,hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
csnjr@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) (01/27/88)
> In article <4777@watdragon.waterloo.edu> djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon) writes: >>For a humorous but insightful classification of programming language >>designers take a look at the book, "Lucid, the Dataflow Programming >>Language," by William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, Academic Press, >>1975. His classifications are: >> 1) Cowboys >> 2) Wizards >> 3) Preachers >> 4) Boffins >> 5) Handymen >> 6) Repairmen The LUCID stuff is quite fun to read. After reading it, I tried to decide which of these patronising categories is most appropriate for the designers of LUCID... Seriously, though. Wadge and his team spend, I think, an entire chapter of their book just slagging off every other field of language and/or system design, and then propose that the answer is dataflow machines and languages. And how far has this rather intolerant and opinionated campaign got them? Quite so. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick%lfcs.ed.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk <Atlantic Ocean>!mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ "Nothing's forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten." - Herne