ACM

ACM

[Robert C. Leif]

When I renewed my ACM membership, I had to answer Question 7.  Ada was NOT
given as a selection.  BASIC, dialects of C including two forms of Java,
.Net, and XML were listed.  I hope that the SIGAda leadership and others
active in ACM alert this organization to Ada.

Otherwise, I would prefer to be affiliated with the IEEE.  At least, it
includes the word engineering in its name. 

Bob Leif

7. Which programming languages do you know/use, or plan to purchase within
12 months? (check all that apply). No Ada!

Re: ACM

[Björn Persson]

Robert C. Leif wrote:

> When I renewed my ACM membership, I had to answer Question 7.  Ada was NOT
> given as a selection.  BASIC, dialects of C including two forms of Java,
> ..Net, and XML were listed.
[...]
> 7. Which programming languages do you know/use, or plan to purchase within
> 12 months? (check all that apply). No Ada!

Gah! Yet another fool who thinks XML is a programming language. And how 
do I purchase a language?

-- 
Björn Persson

jor ers @sv ge.
b n_p son eri nu

Re: ACM

[Marin David Condic]

By most computer-sciency-type definitions of "Programming Language" - 
XML would qualify. It does have a means of describing how data is to be 
organized and manipulated. Especially if one is really thinking of XML 
in the larger sense of including style sheets and such. At minimum it is 
a method of "programming" a DOM or SAX "machine", isn't it? It really 
doesn't take much to make something constitute a "programming language". 
A word processor that can remember keystrokes and replay them is a kind 
of "programming language", isn't it? ;-)

And as for purchasing a "language" - I imagine if you were Microsoft you 
might be able to "purchase" Java from Sun. :-) But they're probably just 
sloppy in their use of English & would really want to know if you plan 
to purchase a translator for a language. I'm sure there would be plenty 
of vendors willing to sell something like that.

MDC

Bj�rn Persson wrote:
> 
> Gah! Yet another fool who thinks XML is a programming language. And how 
> do I purchase a language?
> 


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Re: ACM

[Björn Persson]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> By most computer-sciency-type definitions of "Programming Language" - 
> XML would qualify. It does have a means of describing how data is to be 
> organized and manipulated. Especially if one is really thinking of XML 
> in the larger sense of including style sheets and such.

Sure, if you think of XML as the set of all XML-based languages. XSLT 
for example can be used as a programming language. I was thinking of XML 
itself. I would actually say that despite its name, the Extensible 
Markup Language isn't even a language. It's a common syntax for markup 
languages.

I really don't see how XML in itself has "a means of describing how data 
is to be organized and manipulated". It does provide a means of 
organizing data in a tree structure. To describe *how* data may be 
organized you can use XML Schema Language - an XML-based language for 
defining XML-based languages. To describe how the data is to be 
manipulated you can use XSLT - another XML-based language - and to 
describe how it should be presented you might use XSL-FO - also an 
XML-based language.

> A word processor that can remember keystrokes and replay them is a kind 
> of "programming language", isn't it? ;-)

If you mean that it records macros, then it is at least a programming 
tool. If it's displaying a document that you describe as replaying 
keystrokes, then you have just defined ASCII to be a programming 
language. Then the term becomes meaningless because literally everything 
computerish becomes a programming language.

-- 
Björn Persson

jor ers @sv ge.
b n_p son eri nu