asylvain@felix.UUCP (Alvin E. Sylvain) (10/09/90)
In article <6519.tnews@templar.actrix.co.nz> jbickers@templar.actrix.co.nz (John Bickers) writes: >Quoted from - jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles): >> On the contrary, in a discussion about future language design, this is >> a quite appropriate topic. It is my contention that future languages >> shouldn't have pointers at all. Not just no C-like pointers, none at [...] > Look for ways to improve on what seems to be deficient, rather than > ban it altogether. Since the usefulness of pointers seems to be a > matter of judgement (I intensely dislike the ideas of Pascal or BASIC > string constructs), it'd probably be more useful to look at improving > "lint"s, having seperate languages for seperate applications, and so > on. I agree with all, this *is* the forum to discuss future languages. However, I think there has been much bandwidth wast...uh, spent in discussing the pros and cons of an existing feature of an existing language, in ways that would certainly be more useful elsewhere. I don't *disagree* with discussing this here, it just that the discussions seem to be more along the lines of bible-quoran thumping ("is not!" "is too!" "is not!" "is too!" "mommeeeeee!") I.e., we have transgressed into the more religious aspects of programming languages, and articles are bouncing back and forth with additional arguments and diatribes one way or the other. OK, pointers aren't going away. Neither are goto's. Neither will assembly language. But we can hope that these concepts begin to fade away into history. Let's start talking about what's going to make these concepts start fading. I wanna hear some discourse into how Mr. Spock is going to ask the silly machine to compute pi to the last decimal place! And the silly machine will respond, "Apologies, sir, but pi, as I'm sure you're aware, is a transcendental number, and, as such, has *no* final decimal place. However, if you'd like, I can compute as many decimal places as will fill all my available memory, cancelling all other on-going processes, thus driving out the life-force which currently has me under it's control, and, incidentally, causing all other computer-controlled processes to grind to a halt, including life-support >>urk!<< {{internal error! run-on sentence detected! please logoff now! actuating automatic reboot!}} :-) -- =======================Standard Disclaimers Apply======================= "We're sorry, but the reality you have dialed is no | Alvin longer in service. Please check the value of pi, | "the Chipmunk" or pray to your local diety for assistance." | Sylvain == == == == == == =I have no idea what my address is!= == == == == == ==