Re: Language Challenge 2000 - Update

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On 3 Feb 2000, David Starner wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 08:22:04 -0800, Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> wrote:
> >Unless I misread the results, some C and C++ teams (as well as Perl and
> >Python teams) were correct, they just weren't in the top six. 
> 
> Sorry - two out of the nine C teams were correct. It was the two Perl
> teams that got sunk. 
> 
> >> I didn't want to worry about not having garbage collecting 
> >> or hetrogenous lists, so I went with Icon.
> >
> >If you had a library, you could have heterogeneous lists and more in 
> >Ada. 
> You'd have to derive every thing from the same base tagged type, or
> have a library with some serious C level pointer evil. Alternately,
> I could set up variant records.

I was thinking of the tagged type or variant option. Neither Ocaml nor 
Haskell has (untyped) heterogeneous lists, so I can't imagine that this is 
a serious problem. The winning OCaml team didn't even use the class system 
(and Haskell doesn't have OOP facilities) so variants are sufficient here.

> >For GC, I suppose you'd have to use AppletMagic. 
> Or wrap the Boehm-Weiser GC library.

Yuk! How about a real GC for Ada someone? :-)

> >Another choice might be to use a language with GC, built in lists, a
> >powerful module system with signatures, strong static typing (which Icon
> >lacks),
> 
> Of course, I would have found strong static typing in my way with those
> hetrogenous lists.

Explain why. The winning teams had no problem with strong static typing.
Very rarely do I find strong static typing to be a nuisance.

> >higher order functions, and an implementation with a rich tool set 
> >for constructing compilers. I wonder if there is such a beast? ;-)

> Hmm? ML, I guess. The compiler part was only applicable to last year,
> though. It's a Scheme-style syntax - it's not a big deal to parse.

Yes you're right. 

> >> I would be deeply impressed
> >> with anyone who got Ada into the victory circle.
> >
> >I think its tougher to write code quickly in Ada or C++ than in a good FP, 
> >like OCaml, and these contests favor speed of writing.
> Yep. Ada, for all its good points, is not a language designed for quick
> hacking.

I find Ada to be far better for quick hacking than C, but not nearly as
good as Ocaml. GNAT allows me to clean up my mistakes faster in hack mode
than unadorned C, and provides a lot more freedom along dimensions I care
about (genericity, nesting, overloading) while hacking. GNAT error
messages put OCaml error messages to shame; that's still a big problem
with type inference IMO. 

-- Brian