From: jcoffin@taeus.com (Jerry Coffin)
Subject: Re: Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package?
Date: 1996/11/21
Date: 1996-11-21T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <MPLANET.3294c204jcoffin989a3e@news.rmi.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 56trsm$f5a$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au
In article <56trsm$f5a$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au says...
[ rav said ]
> >>Ada clearly failed in this aspect.
>
[ Richard O'keefe repiled ]
> >This is not clear at all.
[ and rav replied to that: ]
> ---It is abundantly clear that it failed as to ease of writing.
> Various postings suggested that the conversion could be done in up
> to 82 lines of Ada code, whereas PL/I requires one simple line.
Given almost any two programming languages, it's trivial to find a
construct that's far more difficult to create in one than the other.
The fact that this particular construct happens to be built into PL/I
but no Ada proves absolutely _nothing_ about the two languages
overall.
If we take a single example as indicative of a language in general,
it's trivial to show that, for instance, C is far more readable than
BASIC.
Likewise, if you simply take program length as an indication of
complexity, it's fairly trivial to show that PL/I is generally
superior to Ada. However, it's equally trivial to show that APL is
_dramatically_ superior to either. Having had to maintain some APL at
one time, I have to question a premise that leads to that particular
conclusion. If you'd like, attempt to translate one simple line of
APL: `b <- /+ a' (where <- is really a single character) into PL/I,
and retain full generality. Here I'm not even trying to pick
something terribly difficult either - just some _really_ simple APL.
Oh, in case you don't know APL, that sums the members of an array
named a, and puts the result into a variable named b. a can be of any
size and number of dimensions.
--
Later,
Jerry.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1996-11-21 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 59+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1996-11-05 0:00 Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package? J.D. Baldwin
1996-11-05 0:00 ` David Shochat
1996-11-08 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-08 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-08 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-10 0:00 ` Verne Arase
1996-11-13 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-13 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-19 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-19 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-11-20 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-11-22 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-11-23 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-11-25 0:00 ` shmuel
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Larry J. Elmore
1996-11-25 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-25 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-26 0:00 ` Larry J. Elmore
1996-11-21 0:00 ` Jerry Coffin [this message]
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-20 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-27 0:00 ` Verne Arase
1996-12-02 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
[not found] ` <56tjrh$4a <MPLANET.3294c204jcoffin989a3e@news.rmi.net>
1996-11-24 0:00 ` Bert
1996-11-13 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-13 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-19 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Ken Garlington
1996-11-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-21 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1996-11-22 0:00 ` robin
1996-11-05 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu
1996-11-06 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1996-11-06 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1996-11-07 0:00 ` Pascal Obry
1996-11-07 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1996-11-08 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1996-11-09 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1996-11-08 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen
1996-11-08 0:00 ` David Emery
1996-11-24 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson
1996-11-24 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-25 0:00 ` J. David Bryan
1996-11-25 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1996-11-27 0:00 ` Verne Arase
1996-11-28 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1996-11-05 0:00 Collection of 2500+ links about Object-Orientation - interested ? Manfred Schneider
1996-11-07 0:00 ` Leading zeros with Int_IO.Put()? Or another package? John Herro
1996-11-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-11-07 0:00 ` James Rogers
1996-12-15 0:00 Robert Dewar
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