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: 103376,fa2cc518ef3b992c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ray Blaak Subject: Re: scripting/extension language for Ada (was : Re: tagged types extensions) Date: 2000/02/10 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 584271250 Sender: blaak@LANGLEY References: <389207CC.C16D80E8@averstar.com> <38971028.BB16D8A2@earthlink.net> <3899F757.FAE131B3@free.fr> <389D43A6.786C7B79@free.fr> X-Complaints-To: news@bctel.net X-Trace: news.bctel.net 950218533 209.53.149.65 (Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:35:33 PDT) Organization: The Transcend NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:35:33 PDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-02-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Pascal Martin writes: >Robert A Duff wrote: > >> As Robert A Duff said : > >> "Scripting languages should encourage programs that are easy to > >> write, easy to understand, and easy to change." > > > > I don't think *I* said that. In fact, my opinion is that "easy to > > write" not important; the other two goals I agree with. Actually, I wrote that. I agree that maintenance is the most important consideration, but I want it all. By easy to write, I do not mean the using a terse symbology of C-like or APL operators. By mean the ability to naturally express powerful high-level abstractions with a minimum of effort. That is, the language style encourages such things. Lispy, functional languages usually do well for me here. By writing things at a higher level, I believe that code is actually clearer and easier to maintain. > It seems to me that everytime I chose to use a scripting rather than > a compiled language, it was for a subset of the following reasons: > > 1- [...] development comfort. 2- Very flexible string manipulation [...] > 3- Easy to use regular expression engine. 4- System operations must be easy > 5- Symbolic indexing [...] 6- Dynamic table resizing. 7- Very portable [...] > 8- Include a GUI toolkit. [...] Plus: Garbage collection is basically > mandatory Very important considerations for me too. I would add flexible data structure manipulation in general, with strings being one of the most important. Perl is my favourite for regular expressions, although there are drawbacks for clarity and maintenance. > Among the scripting languages/interpreters I have used: > > the ugliest: command.com > the slowest: sh I believe these are the worst simply because it is so difficult to express any reasonable programming task. > the most confusing: perl > the most difficult to debug: Tcl (still using it, through, because of Tk :-) > the most obscure: VAX/VMS DCL (all these optional parameters.. ) > the worst limitations: Microsoft Basic on TRS80 (I liked it at the time) I use Visual Basic for testing scripts. While it is actually fairly readable, and one can do Windows COM stuff fairly easily, I despise it, due to major stupidities in the language (a = b vs Set a = b, line continuations -- for comments too! one can do "Set a = Nothing" and then "Doit a" but not "Doit Nothing", etc.). I actually like Perl a fair bit, since at least one can take the trouble to write clear code and it is powerful. My current favourite is scsh due to its coolness. Do ML or Haskell shells exist? It would be interesting to see how implicit static strong typing makes things more correct while style allowing for easy writing of command scripts. -- Cheers, The Rhythm is around me, The Rhythm has control. Ray Blaak The Rhythm is inside me, blaak@infomatch.com The Rhythm has my soul.