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: 107f24,af94092bafe57956,start X-Google-Attributes: gid107f24,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,3734d251d92e2b1e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Franklin Chen Subject: Re: Experiment Proposal re Languages Date: 1996/10/24 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 191789244 sender: chen@menhaden.adi.com references: <32702431.DE6@dynamite.com.au> <326F5E48.5FBA@ehs.ericsson.se> organization: Applied Dynamics newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.functional Date: 1996-10-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jonas Nygren writes: > I believe I saw something similar, to what Alan describes below, > in the comp.lang.functional some year(s) ago. I can't remember what > languages were included in the excersise more than C and some > functional language. The C code was never completed I believe and > the functional language, perhaps Haskell, were the most efficient > in terms of man hours spent and lines of code needed. > > Perhaps somebody else have a reference to this experiment? You are probably referring to the report "Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. Awk vs. ... An Experiment in Software Prototyping Productivity", available at ftp://nebula.systemsz.cs.yale.edu/pub/yale-fp/papers/NSWC/. There is a link to this from http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/hudak-paul.html, which contains other links of interest concerning Haskell and functional programming in general. > Alan Brain wrote: > > > > Re Language Wars. > > > > It's my contention that not all languages are created equal. That some > > have definite advantages over others, all other things being equal. For > > example, and to be non-contraversial, programming in binary is likely to > > be less productive than in C, in general. And a language specifically > > tailored to a problem domain is likely to be better than any > > general-purpose language. This observation is not necessarily in conflict with the idea of fruitfully comparing general-purpose languages. The report mentioned above describes how Haskell, a general-purpose language, was used to express a domain-specific language that was well-suited to the problem domain. If a general-purpose language has features that facilitate the creation of domain-specific languages (see Paul Hudak's "Building Domain-Specific Embedded Languages", http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/hudak-dir/position-paper.ps, for example), and therefore increase productivity, then does this not count as an advantage of such a general-purpose language over an ad hoc special-purpose language? -- Franklin Chen | chen@adi.com, http://www.adi.com/~chen/ Applied Dynamics International | http://www.adi.com/ 3800 Stone School Road | Phone: (313) 973-1300 Ann Arbor, MI 48108-2499 | FAX: (313) 668-0012