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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f43e6,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 101deb,f96f757d5586710a X-Google-Attributes: gid101deb,public From: adam@irvine.com (Adam Beneschan) Subject: Re: PL/I Versus Ada (Was: Arianne ...) Date: 1996/08/30 Message-ID: <507g63$thi@krusty.irvine.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 177519305 distribution: world references: <3225E4D3.6F5992E1@microware.com> <507a6o$hd3@overload.lbl.gov> organization: /z/news/newsctl/organization newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1 Date: 1996-08-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: tonyk@sseos.lbl.gov (Tony Konashenok) writes: >I would add to this that a human being (assuming that a programmer is >human) also has certain capabilities of data abstraction [s]he uses in >writing code, and it had better be matched by the programming language. >What I assert here is that PL/I has the abstraction capacities roughly >equivalent to those of human thinking; furthermore, it operates the same >syntactic categories as most humans. Therefore, it is very intuitive. >If you look at meta-languages used here and there to facilitate the >description of logic flow, most of them are very much like PL/I. Not Ada. >Not C++. Oh well, BNF is indeed closer to Ada, but hardly anyone uses >it for intuitive explanations. >Even if one needs greater degree of abstraction, it is always possible to >formulate this abstraction once using the traditional syntactic constructs, >include it in your code, and then reuse it as you please. Just like writing >your own macros in assembly code. PL/I, by the way, has certain features >to help implement object-orientation. GENERIC comes to mind. OK, now you've got me curious. I looked a little at PL/I many years ago, but I'm afraid the language may have changed too much in the last 15-20 years. Could you explain in greater detail the assertions you've just made? In particular, I'd be interested to see: (1) What the syntactic categories of PL/I are that correspond to human thinking, and how Ada falls short in that regard. (2) What the abstraction capacities of PL/I are, and what about them makes them more equivalent to human thought than Ada constructs do. (3) How PL/I's GENERIC features facilitate object-orientation better than Ada's GENERIC features do. (4) How Backus-Naur Form resembles Ada. -- Adam