Language wars (6th September)

Language wars (6th September)

[Roy Gardiner]

This thread is a periodic repost of 'our favourite languages', started as 
light relief from the PL/I vs ADA debate in comp.lang.pli and other 
groups. Please cross-post to any group you see fit. To contribute, send 
an e-mail to me gardinerr@dcslambert.agw.bt.co.uk) indicating your 
'favourite' languages, in order 1 to 4 (or less, if you only like 1 or 2 
languages).

Rules: 

1) You may not vote for the language you learned first as no. 1. So 
'everyone always loves their first language best' is eliminated.

2) You may only vote for languages where you have good practical 
experience

So far, everyone has been polite and I have not been flamed --- !


The Language Preference Grid (6 September 1996)

               1   2   3   4
|------------|---|---|---|---|
| ada        | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| c          | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| J          | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| APL        | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| VB         | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|------------|---|---|---|---|
| pascal     | 0 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| fortran    | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| lisp       | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| perl       | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| pli        | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
|------------|---|---|---|---|
| orwell     | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Bliss      | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| X86 BAL    | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Pick basic | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
|------------|---|---|---|---|
| postScript | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| IDL        | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| COBOL      | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Scan       | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 8086 BAL   | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |


Roy Gardiner

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Solomon Taibi]

Roy Gardiner <gardinerr@dcslambert.agw.bt.co.uk> wrote:

>1) You may not vote for the language you learned first as no. 1. So 
>'everyone always loves their first language best' is eliminated.

Not me.  The first language I learned was GWBASIC.  It's the best
language (at least for me) for making my PC make funny sounds, but not
much else.  Even for that it's not real good since all else must
stop while the funny sounds are made.

>2) You may only vote for languages where you have good practical 
>experience

Categorize this as you will:

Most fun at college (undergraduate):  LISP

Most fun at college (graduate):  awk

Most ineresting at college (graduate):  C++

Easiest to program nontrivially:  Pascal

Most ways to do interesting things I don't know how to do any other
way:  Assembler (8088 <old Intel>, 68000 <Apple>, and 370 <BAL>)

Most profitable to me personally,both before and after graduate
school: PL/I on an IBM mainframe, with CICS and embedded SQL.

Second most profitible, but easiest to get 
an OK  job in a hurry: COBOL.

>| orwell     | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |

OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?

--
S. Taibi 
*****************************************************
***** Write in JULIAN BOND for president in '96 *****
*****************************************************

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Frank Derichsweiler]

Solomon Taibi wrote:
> 
> Roy Gardiner <gardinerr@dcslambert.agw.bt.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> >1) You may not vote for the language you learned first as no. 1. So
> >'everyone always loves their first language best' is eliminated.
> 
> Not me.  The first language I learned was GWBASIC.  It's the best
> language (at least for me) for making my PC make funny sounds, but not
> much else.  Even for that it's not real good since all else must
> stop while the funny sounds are made.
> 
> >2) You may only vote for languages where you have good practical
> >experience
> 
> Categorize this as you will:
> 
> Most fun at college (undergraduate):  LISP
> 
> Most fun at college (graduate):  awk
> 
> Most ineresting at college (graduate):  C++
> 
> Easiest to program nontrivially:  Pascal
> 
> Most ways to do interesting things I don't know how to do any other
> way:  Assembler (8088 <old Intel>, 68000 <Apple>, and 370 <BAL>)
> 
> Most profitable to me personally,both before and after graduate
> school: PL/I on an IBM mainframe, with CICS and embedded SQL.
> 
> Second most profitible, but easiest to get
> an OK  job in a hurry: COBOL.
> COBOL means 
COmmon Badly Oriented Language, right ? ;-)

IMHO, Smalltalk is a *VERY GOOD* Language

Frank

> >| orwell     | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
> 
> OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?
> 
> --
> S. Taibi
> *****************************************************
> ***** Write in JULIAN BOND for president in '96 *****
> *****************************************************

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Robert Dewar]

"> COBOL means
COmmon Badly Oriented Language, right ? ;-)"

You are allowed to make that joke if you are a COBOL expert, in which case
of course you are indeed joking, because you know the strengths of COBOL
as well as its weaknesses. if however, such a joke is a cover for ignorance,
then it's sad rather than funny. I am always amazed in the programming
language field how often people are willing to have opinions about languages
they know nothing about, often copying their ideas from others equally
misinformed, a true case of the blind leading the blind :-)

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Rony.Flatscher]

O.K., as this is going to very different groups, how about this ranking ?

        1) Object Rexx          (OS/2, Windows)
        2) Rexx                 (all opsys)
        3) NetRexx              (Java, i.e. all opsys)

There is *some* impact of the Rexx-family of programming languages, IMHO.

---rony

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Roy Gardiner]

Frank Derichsweiler <i31ade@kommsrv.rz.unibw-muenchen.de> wrote:
>Solomon Taibi wrote:

(snips)
>Frank
>
>> >| orwell     | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
>> 
>> OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?
>> 

Beats me, I just count'em and post the results

Roy Gardiner

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Ian Collier]

[Followups set to comp.lang.misc]

In article <967cc$112c6.322@NEWS>, taibi@inil.com (Solomon Taibi) wrote:
|OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?

A functional language, closely related to Miranda and Gofer.

For example:

> factorial x = x, if x<3
>             = x*factorial(x-1), otherwise

This whole article is an Orwell program, because lines not starting with ">"
are comments.  Coincidentally enough, it is also a Gofer program if you
invoke the interpreter with the right flags.

Ian Collier - imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk - WWW Home Page (including REXX section):
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/users/ian.collier/index.html

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Norman H. Cohen]

In article <9075.imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk>, imc@ecs.ox.ac.uk (Ian Collier) writes: 

> |OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?
>
> A functional language, closely related to Miranda and Gofer.
>
> For example: 
>
> > factorial x = x, if x<3
> >             = x*factorial(x-1), otherwise

Well, there certainly is something Orwellian about asserting that 0! = 0.

> This whole article is an Orwell program, because lines not starting with ">"
> are comments.

Until it gets quoted in another article! :-)

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Ian Collier]

In article <5140ec$g9b@watnews1.watson.ibm.com>, ncohen@watson.ibm.com wrote:
|> > factorial x = x, if x<3
|> >             = x*factorial(x-1), otherwise
|
|Well, there certainly is something Orwellian about asserting that 0! = 0.

OK, clever clogs. :-)

> factorial 0 = 1
> factorial (n+1) = n+1, if n<2
>                 = (n+1)*factorial n, otherwise

So I've demonstrated pattern matching now as well.

|> This whole article is an Orwell program, because lines not starting with ">"
|> are comments.
|
|Until it gets quoted in another article! :-)

Says who? :-)

Ian Collier - imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk - WWW Home Page:
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/users/ian.collier/index.html

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[Daniel P Hudson]

taibi@inil.com (Solomon Taibi) wrote:
>Roy Gardiner <gardinerr@dcslambert.agw.bt.co.uk> wrote:

>>1) You may not vote for the language you learned first as no. 1. So
>>'everyone always loves their first language best' is eliminated.

>Not me.  The first language I learned was GWBASIC.  It's the best
>language (at least for me) for making my PC make funny sounds, but not
>much else.  Even for that it's not real good since all else must
>stop while the funny sounds are made.

 Follow-up set to comp.lang.misc where this should be appropriate.
 I suggest the original poster set the follow-up field to
 c.l.m from now on when posting this. Cross-posted thread are a
 pain and vary annoying to those who basically just don't care what
 everyone's magical opinion of a language is. I use a variety of
 languages and I don't like any of them better than another. As far
 as the Basic cheap shot, I've translated BBS systems, a variety
 of tutorials, several minor DOS utilities into and from Basic,
 so if you couldn't do more than make sounds, you were using it
 wrong, perhaps stick the disk in label side up next time. ;-)

>OK, I'll bite.  What is "Orwell", beside my favorite English author?

 http://www.yahoo.com/text/Computers_and_Internet/Languages/

Re: Language wars (6th September)

[David Whiteman]

Scott Wadler wrote:
> 
> No votes for java?

And no votes for Smalltalk?  It gets my vote...
-- 
	David Whiteman            Applied Reasoning Systems Corp.
	whiteman@arscorp.com      2840 Plaza Place
	(919) 781-7997            Suite 325
	http://www.arscorp.com    Raleigh, NC 27612-6344