Time for a new programming language paradigm
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(Not everyone uses Visual Studio.)
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
If it was easy, everybody could it it! But on a more serious note, not using Visual Studio is a choice... For the hourly costs of developers (at least in the US), its worth the money to equip people with the best tools to accomplish work. And before going off on costs, there are free versions of VS. Hogan
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Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
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This is a major rant I have about default (e.g. StyleCop) formatting conventions. They waste so much space that you can't actually see what the code does.
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rjmoses wrote:
trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality.
It still is. A decent C# class uses less characters to convey the same info as written in Object Pascal. Less characters to convey the same info - do you really need a "begin" and an "end" block?
rjmoses wrote:
Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module.
When is something obvious? If you've ever hunted a swallowed exception in VB6, you'll know that this is not possible. Code should be unambigious, simple and clean. It should not become an exercise to omit documentation.
rjmoses wrote:
- The language should be portable.
It's not the language that decides on what platforms it will be implemented. VB6 will never appear on Linux without starting a major war.
rjmoses wrote:
- The code should be almost self-documenting.
Only if you're not coding, but scripting. That means that we'd limit this "programmer" to an IDE like MS Access. You'd never get InterOp or call the WinAPI. You'd never get a pointer.
rjmoses wrote:
- The language should incorporate most commonly-used functionality.
I've yet to meet the (broadly used) language that doesn't. Type-safety is something valuable - suggesting to remove it would be a step back.
rjmoses wrote:
- And, finally, it should be easily extensible.
A language? Please not; how would your old code react to changes? Can you oversee whether or not your change "breaks" something? Sorry, but only MS Access has these properties. I don't see it being used in the same way we use programming languages.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
rjmoses wrote:
- The language should be portable.
It's not the language that decides on what platforms it will be implemented. VB6 will never appear on Linux without starting a major war.
Every language* is portable, but not every language gets ported everywhere. * With the possible exception of the various assembly languages, but I suspect that even they could be compiled for a system they weren't intended for, perhaps with some limitations, but I'm no expert on that.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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If it was easy, everybody could it it! But on a more serious note, not using Visual Studio is a choice... For the hourly costs of developers (at least in the US), its worth the money to equip people with the best tools to accomplish work. And before going off on costs, there are free versions of VS. Hogan
snorkie wrote:
not using Visual Studio is a choice
Exactly.
snorkie wrote:
the best tools
What's that got to do with Visual Studio? :-D Seriously, I use Visual Studio when I need to, but not when I don't. I have Ultimate at work and Express at home. Use the right tool for the right job.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Didn't he say it was a BASH script? Isn't that Klingon?
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Didn't he say it was a BASH script? Isn't that Klingon?
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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So... what you want is a common business oriented language? COBOL it is!
After two decades of cobol I am ready to chuck it out the window
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Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
20 years of programming in Cobol, C++, and html The language that meets your requirements is Visual Basic 2013. Everything that C++ can do Visual Basic 2013 can do. Here is an example of code, with no documentation, lets see if you can figure out what it does.
Public Interface iArray(Of someType)
Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As someType)Sub AddRange(Range() As someType) Function Clear() As someType() Property Collected() As someType() Function Count() As Int64 Property Item(Index As Int64) As someType WriteOnly Property NewItem() As someType WriteOnly Property NewItems As someType() Property Populated As Boolean Function LastIndex() As Int64End Interface
<Serializable>
Partial Public Class Array(Of SomeType)
Implements iArray(Of SomeType)Private mCollected() As SomeType Private mPopulated As Boolean Public Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).ItemAdded Public Property Collected() As SomeType() Implements iArray(Of SomeType).Collected Get If mCollected Is Nothing Then mCollected = New SomeType() {} Return mCollected End Get Set(value As SomeType()) mCollected = value End Set End Property Public Sub AddRange(Range() As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).AddRange Allocate(Collected, Range) Populated = True End Sub Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType) As SomeType() Return Allocate(TheArray, Value, LastIndexOf(TheArray)) End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType) As SomeType() Return Allocate(TheArray, Values, LastIndexOf(TheArray)) End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType() Try For Current As Int64 = 0 To Values.Length - 1 Allocate(TheArray, Values(Current), Index + Current) Next Catch End Try Return TheArray End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType() Try TheArray(Index) = Value Catch ReDim Preserve TheArray(Index) TheArray(Index) = Value End Try Return TheArray -
Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
I think it's time for you to move forward from living in the late Paleolithic in terms of developer tools to the modern era where superb tools like .NET's compiler, Visual Studio, and add-ons like ReSharper, help make coding much more efficient. It's always going to be a "Tower of Bable" out there, in the real world. But, if you enjoy living without the wheel, fine.
“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.” Jorge Luis Borges
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All your answers are at The Osmosian Order[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
How long have you been waiting to trot that one out? That frickin' awesome.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
So you want to learn COBOL?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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All your answers are at The Osmosian Order[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
You beat me to it Chris. I read this title in CP daily news, & came rushing here to suggest the legendary Osmosian. Great! You have a good memory too ;). Hail Osmo!
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.
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Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
Visual Basic .NET have almost all those features
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Just spent the better part of two weeks trying to find a bug in a Linux bash script (missing ".") and I'm tired of looking for things like a missing equal sign in the middle of an C if statement, missing period in a PHP script, lower case variable name mixed with an upper case variable name, missing brace in a C++ object, undelared function or operator overloading....get my drift?...in other people's code. (Being the perfect programmer, I never make those kinds of mistakes! And I have swamp property if you're interested.) All too many programming errors are occurring because programming languages, like C, C++, java, etc., trace their origins back to the days when terseness was a desirable quality. Printing a program listing on an ASR 33 teletype at 10 CPS on a single threaded machine made using braces in C if statements instead of a clear if-then-else-endif highly desirable. (Remember the origins of C?) Those extra 9 characters took TIME to read in and to print out. And then there's issues of language diversity. C, C++, PHP, Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and other languages--what works where? So, here's a few of my thoughts: (And please don't be too anal about my examples--I really want to hear how programming languages could be advanced so that I can be more productive.) Among other things, a New Programming Language should: 1) Be clear and obvious in describing the functionality of the module. The resulting code should almost be language like. A sentence like "If (A equals 10) then print B as "xx.xx" else B = 0 end". But, that statement might also be written in a more mathematical syntax (like Fortran) as "If (A = 10) then....". Note the "=" in the second statement does NOT have the implied assignment and resulting TRUE logical decision (Spent 6 months chasing THAT bug!). 2) The language should be portable. The language should be executable as an interpreted, compiled, scripted or shell'ed running under most commonly available OS's and browsers. Perhaps Interpreted for testing, Compiled for execution speed, scripted for portability or shell'ed for utility work. Take features from scripting languages like Powershell, bash, incorporate execution speed of C, objectivity of Java or C++ and put them under one roof. Write a module that runs under IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, or anything else. 3) The code should be almost self-documenting. Nothing I hate worse than to have to go looking for the a type declaration, a
As for missing equal signs, try Yoda conditions[^]! :)
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]
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20 years of programming in Cobol, C++, and html The language that meets your requirements is Visual Basic 2013. Everything that C++ can do Visual Basic 2013 can do. Here is an example of code, with no documentation, lets see if you can figure out what it does.
Public Interface iArray(Of someType)
Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As someType)Sub AddRange(Range() As someType) Function Clear() As someType() Property Collected() As someType() Function Count() As Int64 Property Item(Index As Int64) As someType WriteOnly Property NewItem() As someType WriteOnly Property NewItems As someType() Property Populated As Boolean Function LastIndex() As Int64End Interface
<Serializable>
Partial Public Class Array(Of SomeType)
Implements iArray(Of SomeType)Private mCollected() As SomeType Private mPopulated As Boolean Public Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).ItemAdded Public Property Collected() As SomeType() Implements iArray(Of SomeType).Collected Get If mCollected Is Nothing Then mCollected = New SomeType() {} Return mCollected End Get Set(value As SomeType()) mCollected = value End Set End Property Public Sub AddRange(Range() As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).AddRange Allocate(Collected, Range) Populated = True End Sub Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType) As SomeType() Return Allocate(TheArray, Value, LastIndexOf(TheArray)) End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType) As SomeType() Return Allocate(TheArray, Values, LastIndexOf(TheArray)) End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType() Try For Current As Int64 = 0 To Values.Length - 1 Allocate(TheArray, Values(Current), Index + Current) Next Catch End Try Return TheArray End Function Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType() Try TheArray(Index) = Value Catch ReDim Preserve TheArray(Index) TheArray(Index) = Value End Try Return TheArrayIt does create a maintenance hell ;P Seriously though: you can write undocumented code in any language. And it is never a good idea!
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]
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If it was easy, everybody could it it! But on a more serious note, not using Visual Studio is a choice... For the hourly costs of developers (at least in the US), its worth the money to equip people with the best tools to accomplish work. And before going off on costs, there are free versions of VS. Hogan
snorkie wrote:
If it was easy, everybody could it it!
Did Resharper help you fix that sentence? No? Then why didn't you use VS to write your posting? ;P On a more serious note: 1. VisualAssist beats Resharper and (Un)Intellisense on C++ coding (at least unmanaged C++ - no experience wrt managed C++/CLI). 2. I do miss quite a few official standard C++11 features that VS still doesn't support. And I hate to figure out the exact syntax on certain template constructs with virtually no documentation on how to do properly (or at all)! (E. g. defining a template friend function inside a class) 3.
snorkie wrote:
And before going off on costs, there are free versions of VS.
... which don't support Resharper (or any other plugins) I do agree that VS is a great tool. But for some people it may not be the right one.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]
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Sounds like a reason to requisition a larger monitor[^] :laugh:
Wow, at >8000$ for a smartphone resolution screen? Seriously? :wtf:
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]
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Let's see.. there must be a relevant XKDC... oh, yeah, this'll do: http://xkcd.com/927/[^] :-D Such language should not be English-centric like most of today's languages; rather each developer should be able to view and edit the code in his own chosen language. (And formatted as the individual likes as well.) In fact, I think a new language should be XML-based with the IDE applying styling and such as specified by the user. :-D Of course, I would never use such a language, I'd stick with good old C#.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
Algol-67 was defined in terms of abstract syntax elements that could be represented using any suitable set of concrete symbols. I never saw much Algol-67 source code, but most of what I have seen used German keywords. (Algol-67 never caugth on - it was way ahead of its time. Even today, 47 years later, it would definitely be descibed as a very advanced language. I haven't looked at the specification for a while, but I am sure that some of its useful features are still missing from today's languages.) Maybe it was Algol-67 that inspired us when we as students made a Norwegian version of Pascal. It really was a simple word replacement program replacing MEDAN with WITH, BYRJ with BEGIN and STOGG with END (those who know Norwegian will see that we chose the dialect-based Norwegian variant), writing it to a temporary file and invoking the standard compiler on that temporary one. It worked perfectly as long as you in you user defined symbols stayed away from both the Norwegian and English reserved words.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
rjmoses wrote:
- The language should be portable.
It's not the language that decides on what platforms it will be implemented. VB6 will never appear on Linux without starting a major war.
Every language* is portable, but not every language gets ported everywhere. * With the possible exception of the various assembly languages, but I suspect that even they could be compiled for a system they weren't intended for, perhaps with some limitations, but I'm no expert on that.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
