andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) (05/06/88)
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"The problems with PL/I, which did try to include it all, and
ADA are that they assumed that the bad notations of the
predecessors should be continued. The assembler notation,
after which PL/I is largely modeled, is the main reason that
direct assembler code is not used more. There is no machine to
my knowledge which is as complicated as BASIC, let alone the
other HLLs. ADA did not really try to include it all, and
admittedly made no attempt to provide easily writable code.
The resulting code was therefore not easily readable. We can
do much better."
Wow, I feel as though I wandered onto a different planet. The PL/I
that I knew and loved back in the 70s looked like no assembler I'd ever
seen; it resembled the alloy of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol-60 that it
was designed to be. PL/I was attractive to assembler programmers
because, unlike other IBM languages, it could be used to access most
system services; for example, the runtime library let you manipulate
just about every type of file (sequential, indexed, direct, ...)
And I argue that a language in which it is hard to write code is not
necessarily one in which it is hard to read code. An excellent
counter-example is Algol-68; very hard to make a program that gets past
the compiler, but the result is quite readable.
As to "we can do much better," I'd say, intending no disrespect, that
it's time to put up or shut up. Show us what this language might look
like. Failing that, show us some fragments of code written in an ideal
language, to give us an idea of what you're getting at ... the
generalities are becoming content-free.
[Followups have been directed to comp.lang.misc only, to give our
architecture friends a respite.]
-=- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew) [UUCP]
(andrew%tekecs.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA]