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!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is Python higher level than Ada? Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 10:12:29 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: vZYCW951TbFitc4GdEwQJg.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.4.0 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:32337 Date: 2016-11-16T10:12:29+01:00 List-Id: On 16/11/2016 01:36, Victor Porton wrote: > Is the following statement correct? > > "Python is a higher level programming language than Ada." > > The purpose of my question is not to start a holy war, but to get better > understanding of what "higher level programming language" phrase may mean. > > I have good knowledge of both Python and Ada. > > My question is not about particular features, but about which features are > considered in definition of "higher level". Yes, you start with a definition of. "high" refers to the distance from the computational substrate and the "direction". Which itself is ambiguous as it may refer machine code, Turing machine ... or human way of thinking about computation where tons of paradigms come in (procedural, OO, functional, domain-specific x number of domains). "Direction" should mean reduced size/complexity. > One feature I may think of, is that Python may be more easily integrated > with databases by using dynamic fields or attributes. Does this feature > contribute to what deserves to be called "higher level"? > > Also Python 3 has metaclasses but Ada doesn't. Is it essential for > definition of a very high level programming language? See above. For OO paradigm it might be important, assuming Python implements them correctly, which I honestly doubt. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de