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From: "G.B." <bauhaus@futureapps.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Is Python higher level than Ada?
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:01:15 +0100
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Date: 2016-11-16T14:01:15+01:00
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On 16/11/2016 07:56, Paul Rubin wrote:
> letting you think of the problem more naturally.

John von Neumann has reportedly commented on a predecessor
of Fortran, classifying it as a waste of valuable human
resources (comparing to direct control of the computational
apparatus). So, thinking of a problem in terms of a particular
language is perhaps tied to one's particular nature.

Then, there are the old levels up to declarative style logical
database evaluators; also, there are formalisms that will incur
paradoxes, e.g. lambda calculus, in contrast others like FOL, IINM.
CLOS has had metaclasses for a long time (Smalltalk, too?),
also EVAL and COMPILE, but still isn't any lower or higher
than the competition, I think. The Shen language's type
system is Turing complete. Does that make it higher level?
Formally, is there something high above types?

Maybe, specifying "reduced size/complexity" (Dmitry), the level
of a language becomes higher whenever things are taken away from it,
such as detail, control of computational operations, control of
concurrent execution, addressing I/O specifics, ...

The highest level language will be that which allows
a PHB to express both the problem description and its
solution in just one speech bubble addressing Dilbert.