Re: The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture The Emperor's Old Clothes

[gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com (Gautier)]

> >(however, it's amusing to read it with today's eyes,
> >especially what happened to the minimalist creations
> >coming from ivory towers)

Lyle McKennot:

> Hoare's own CSP did become very influential though.
> 
> It is the third most cited computer science reference listed by
> ResearchIndex. 

Hopefully, good ideas come from ivory towers!
The issue is the concretisation.

Back to the lecture: what is better for whom (language creators
or programmers) ?

 (1) a large language that one can subset if needed
 (2) a small language that one can extend if needed

For using (1) the design has to be excellent.
Making (1) is completely out of reach of the "ivory tower".
The obvious weakness of (2) is the incompatibility
between extensions and standard libraries.

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Gautier  --  http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/gsoft.htm

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