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From: rf@wu1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: "high-level" (some thoughts)
Message-ID: <331@wu1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 18:58:49 EST
Article-I.D.: wu1.331
Posted: Mon Jan  7 18:58:49 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Jan-85 04:42:09 EST
Organization: Western Union Telegraph, Mahwah, NJ
Lines: 17

The term "high-level" used to imply a hierarchy in which the first level was
numeric machine code, the second level was assembler code, the third level
was procedural languages like FORTRAN and COBOL, and the forth was problem-
oriented "languages" like MACSYMA or VisiCalc.  By this definition it is
clear that Ada, Algol, Basic, C, COBOL, FORTRAN, Modula-2, Pascal, and PL/I
are all at the same level.

Regrettably, sales hype has given the term "high-level" the meaning "good".
Thus the discussion of language level in net.lang is becoming a discussion
of the quality of languages -- an interesting topic, but not one subject to
quantification or resolution.

				Randolph Fritz
UUCPnet:			{ihnp4,decvax}!philabs!wu1!rf

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