From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/08/01 Message-ID: <01bb7fd0$011e2ae0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171441789 references: <31daad10.57288085@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov><31ebfbd7.330061022@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov><31EE19D1.6977@lfwc.lockheed.com><31efe069.63062188@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov><4sopkp$dao@itfhps00.itf.hcsd.ca><31f3c396.238311543@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov><01bb78b1$28455ec0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com><31F613F3.2781E494@escmail.orl.mmc.com><01bb7bf9$b89a1740$96ee6fcf@timhome2><4tiorn$r5b@rational.rational.com><01bb7dd3$88e808a0$96ee6fcf@timhome2><4tkfqk$duc@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au><01bb7e27$a5e51a20$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c Date: 1996-08-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Darin Johnson wrote in article ... > > > Do you suppose it would take the world by storm? > > > Well, _I_ use it, but no, Clean (for that is its name), has _not_ taken > > > the world by storm, and I don't expect it will. > > > > Never know; maybe you should write a free operating system in it. :) > > Some people are going to use the language anyway, there are language > junkies out there. Most people though, won't give it a second glance > until it becomes popular, a tough catch-22. They certainly don't want > to suddenly have the language vanish and get stuck with a program > that's painful to maintain (I've heard a horror story about a commonly > used admin utility written in Icon, and then the programmer left and > no one can maintain it but it's still in use; Icon is a nice language > but if no one knows it...). Here's some important things to do to > give your new fictitious language a boost: > > [PARAPHRASE: Make it free; make it portable; generate C as backend;] > [Moderate runtime requirements; take criticism] Very interesting; I quite agree. I would only add... make it possible to coexist with another language, such as C. We use TCL here as a simple scripting language that we were able to drop into our application for site customization purposes. If it was "all TCL or nothing", I never would have used it. This is not a pure example, since TCL is an interpreted shell language, but my point is that if you make it easy for people to have a middle ground to experiment with a language to see what benefits can be made, a new language has a much better chance of succeeding. -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)