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: 109fba,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: kaz@vision.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Any research putting c above ada? Date: 1997/05/20 Message-ID: <5lrbnv$iaj@bcrkh13.bnr.ca>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 242572180 References: Organization: Prism Systems Inc. Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-05-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Jon S Anthony wrote: >> computer science as to usefulness, there are parts of it that simply >> do not get done elsewhere. Who else except computer scientists care >> about compiler construction > >That falls under engineering. In your opinion. There are schools that incorporate computer science programs entirely into their engineering faculty. Others don't do this. But compiler construction is still compiler construction. I'd hate to see people have to enrol into engineering faculties if they are really interested in computer science. >> and the attached theory of language >> parsing? > >Linguists, mathematicians (formal languages), and philosophers. Where In general, these people don't particularly care for constructing programming language compilers, however. >do you think this stuff came from? The standard "language hierarchy" >used as the basis for recognizers is from Chomsky - a linguist, not a >CSer. You could easily say that Chomsky has a good deal of a computer scientist in him. >> Where else is the theory of communicating processes (things like CSP >> and CCS by Hoare and Milner respectively) going to live except in >> computer science? > >Engineering again. Other than how this works in actual software >systems, who cares? Most engineering professors (at least the types I have known) would butcher and operating systems course. I went to a school where certain upper level CS courses had precise counterparts in Engineering. The engineering versions of these courses were so poor that smart engineering students signed up for the CS versions. ``other than how this works in actual systems'' --- typical engineering attitude. To heck with abstraction, where is the iron? >> My own work is theoretical (a formal model of C), and is not something >> I could do anywhere except in a computer science setting. > >Maybe, but I suppose that's because a formal model of C is completely >uninteresting outside the context of how it can/should/was intended A formal model of C might be of value to engineers who wish to more-less formally verify the semantics (and hence the correctness) of programs written in that language. >(or not) to be used to write programs. But in reality, this sort of >thing is done by linguists (models of languages...) Uh, yeah, whatever. I can just see some artsie linguist formalizing the C language! If there is such a linguist, I'd like to be introduced to him or her. To begin with, linguists tend to scoff at artificial languages of any sort.