steve@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve (D.E.) Stevenson) (07/24/87)
The recent discussion of optimization mentioned BLISS as a really good example. That started me thinking about the fact that BLISS really made a splash initially and now one hardly hears about it. Question: What are the causes of such a demise and what are the causes of success? This is a realistic question to ask now that such things as hypercubes are making the scientific programming community rethink what they're using. From what I know, C and FORTRAN are the most used in this context. Steve Stevenson steve@hubcap.clemson.edu (aka D. E. Stevenson), dsteven@clemson.csnet Department of Computer Science, (803)656-5880.mabell Clemson Univeristy, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 [In the words of A. J. Perlis, "Fortran is the Fortran of the 80's." Bliss is a swell language, but not so swell as to counter Fortran and C's cultural advantages of having much existing useful code and many working implementations. Besides, Bliss seemed to me to make it hard to write portable code, and the array and pointer subscripting scheme was so beautifully general as to be unusable. I speak from experience with Bliss-10 and Bliss-11, your milage may have varied. -John] -- Send compilers articles to ima!compilers or, in a pinch, to Levine@YALE.ARPA Plausible paths are { ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale | cca}!ima Please send responses to the originator of the message -- I cannot forward mail accidentally sent back to compilers. Meta-mail to ima!compilers-request