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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news4.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Andrew Reilly Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.modula3,comp.programming Subject: Re: Alternatives to C: ObjectPascal, Eiffel, Ada or Modula-3? Date: 26 Jul 2009 03:27:29 GMT Message-ID: <7d20p0F29q0dnU1@mid.individual.net> References: <4fc0934e-197b-4a02-a006-4b64072897b2@h18g2000yqj.googlegroups.com> <7020ad82-ed09-4c87-8f46-db23bf2fa866@32g2000yqj.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net k2JxvFVdhNxU4X0tePvR/AyM3cfhXlLXULNRyDdGasXmbtUeqj Cancel-Lock: sha1:CDa5L4A8rjFOAT38Kzh88OkwqSQ= User-Agent: Pan/0.133 (House of Butterflies) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.eiffel:429 comp.lang.ada:7358 comp.lang.modula3:111 comp.programming:12048 Date: 2009-07-26T03:27:29+00:00 List-Id: On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:10:03 -0400, wwilson wrote: > One thing that made a difference is that some of the common languaages > of that era were designed so that the compiler could determine the kind > of statement from the first two or three letters of the statement. Both > FORTRAN and the early BASICs were this way. At this point the compiler > jumped to a statement specific translation. No LL(1), parse tables, or > other more powerful techniques needed. Not that I would give up the > language advantages that these techniques allow. There is no free lunch > and, IMHO, many newer language features justify all the extra power that > is necessry to compile them. A comment of Bertrand Meyer's that I remember reading, and agreeing with whole-heartedly, is that computers exist to do work, and the more of our (menial) work that we (as programmers) can get them to do for us, the better off we'll be. I think that most "modern" languages have taken that sentiment well and truly to heart, and that's a very good thing. I do remember loading compilers from tape into 16k-bytes of RAM, too. Yes, it was neat that that was possible, and there are certainly important classes of computers that have no more memory than that, today, but we don't generally ask them to run compilations for us... Cheers, -- Andrew