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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 19:56:23 -0500 From: Dennis Lee Bieber Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Languages don't matter. A mathematical refutation Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 20:56:29 -0400 Organization: IISS Elusive Unicorn Message-ID: References: <87h9t95cly.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <04f0759d-0377-4408-a141-6ad178f055ed@googlegroups.com> <871tk1z62n.fsf@theworld.com> <87pp7kyh2r.fsf@theworld.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 6.00/32.1186 X-No-Archive: YES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 108.79.216.176 X-Trace: sv3-j9HM0FA1iFuMOSIqpUGvHBGNodUjao1KOYfBQunMYvP1uH5KJ+bP40hSbogwHo78he4gZLoyYmnLkpz!ntiULWuuqAFVt1awa6wTgPpSawhTIPdoUrAnjV9kb4LUMWhqaOJju52Di8eqbpD9I3rzjT8RjfvU!XOrhjDDykOPdDLhxvgUym0qGNd8I X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 2723 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:25410 Date: 2015-04-03T20:56:29-04:00 List-Id: On Fri, 03 Apr 2015 18:37:00 -0400, Bob Duff declaimed the following: >Jeffrey Carter writes: >I think putting "assembly and C" at the same "level" is absurd. >A C programmer doesn't do register allocation, for just one >example. C, Pascal, and Fortran seem more-or-less the same >"level" to me. And above that level, I think "level" ceases >to be meaningful. > Yet C does support a "storage class specifier" attribute specifying that a variable should (if possible) be allocated to a register. I've always felt C is somewhere between a high macro-capable assembly language (Xerox Sigma Meta-Symbol -- even the native instruction set is defined via an included set of macro definitions) and languages in the FORTRAN/Pascal/Algol families. Mainly as the latter don't have, as part of the language itself, a means of accessing any arbitrary memory address (no casting of any integer value to act as a pointer). Ada may be a higher level than those -- perversely by providing highly controlled syntax for defining low-level machine access (use at xyz, etc.) I suppose, to me, the "level" of a language is inversely related to the ease of creating unsafe/erroneous programs. -- Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/