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: fac41,2c6139ce13be9980 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,3d3f20d31be1c33a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,2c6139ce13be9980 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,2c6139ce13be9980 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Interface/Implementation (was Re: Design by Contract) Date: 1997/09/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 271690958 References: <340C85CE.6F42@link.com> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel Date: 1997-09-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Matthew says <<"...I adopted certain basic principles [of language design] which I believe to be as valid today as they were then...(4) The forth principle was that the compiler should use only a single pass....I can still recommend single-pass top-down recursive descent both as an implementation method and as a design principle for a programming language. [Note carefully the next sentance.] First, we certainly want programs to be read by _people_ and people prefer to read things once in a single pass." That last line is exactly what Robert was refering to: design the language so that it can be read by _humans_ in a single pass (even if it isn't compiled that way), because that's what humans prefer to do. If only the rest of Tony's lecture were that favorable toward Ada...>> Tony is talking about semantic understanding here. Of course he does not think that real, useful, compilers can generate high quality code in a single pass. As for unfavorable to Ada, Tony was surprised that people took his remarks on Ada as being so negative. I often quote one of his favorable remarks, which is that it is possible to choose a subset of Ada that is safe and realiable. Since of course all real applications *are* written in a subset chosen to be appropriate to the application area, this is a most critical statement. Be sure to read TH's forward to Brian's book (that was a while ago, this is not late breaking news here :-)