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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 108717,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid108717,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-03 07:32:46 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.programming,comp.lang.c++,comp.object Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!netmbx.de!zib-berlin.de!informatik.tu-muenchen.de!lrz-muenchen.de!news.informatik.uni-muenchen.de!news.muc.de!isis.muc.de!mike From: Mike.Chapman@muc.de (Mike Chapman) Subject: Re: Why don't large companies use Ada? Followup-To: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.programming,comp.lang.c++,comp.object X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Organization: Home Message-ID: <1994Dec2.225748.1065@isis.muc.de> References: <1994Nov29.154220.27952@cognos.com> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 22:57:48 GMT Xref: bga.com comp.lang.ada:8230 comp.lang.c:33194 comp.programming:5590 comp.lang.c++:39414 comp.object:9368 Date: 1994-12-02T22:57:48+00:00 List-Id: Robert I. Eachus (eachus@spectre.mitre.org) wrote: : In article <3blinp$8dm@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: : > Also of course totally irrelevant, counting the number of characters : > on the page is NOT the way to determine the best language (otherwise we : > would automatically conclude that a language that disallowed comments : > was best :-) : Nonsense! If you programmed in APL, you would know that APL : permits comments. : (And of course APL has a special character to begin comments... ;-) : (For those not familiar with APL, it is an extremely terse : programming language. For example, I know of three extremely short : programs which the user to enter a number, and print all primes less : than or equal to that number. Each implements a different definition : of prime numbers, and the shortest which is sixteen charactes long, is : based on Wilson's theorem. The "standard" software engineering : approach for APL is called throw-away coding. The idea is to write : everything as one-line functions, with several lines of comments in : each which explain the interface and intended use. If you need to : modify the function, you begin by throwing away the code.) The last time I wrote any APL code (ca 15 years ago), as an optimization step I had to throw away all the comments to allow enough space for the program's data in memory!! This was ca. 1000 lines of APL code. I bet the guy who had to maintain this had real fun! The aspect of throw-away functions in APL I can readily confirm. You could spend a whole day writing a line of code. Two days later you would not understand it any more. -- Mike Chapman As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein --