Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gumby.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!uwvax!gumby!g-frank
From: g-frank@gumby.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: high-level-headedness
Message-ID: <241@gumby.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Jan-85 00:26:42 EST
Article-I.D.: gumby.241
Posted: Thu Jan  3 00:26:42 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Jan-85 00:47:07 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 21



>   A high-level language expresses high-level concepts WELL.
>	-- Macrakis@Harvard

My knee-jerk reaction is to agree.  On reflection, however, I have two
questions:

  1) Which is more important to this definition:  expressiveness, or
     the level of the concepts expressed?

  2) Are we going to have an easier time defining high-level concepts
     than we did defining a high-level language?

A virtuous man is filled with virtue, I suppose, but definitions of this
sort leave us in doubt as to the value of his qualities.

Can we take a different approach and suggest, as I once did in a rather
fuzzy way, that the first purpose of a language is to communicate, and
that all the features of the elephant we've been blindly describing may
be different aspects of effective communication of ideas and purpose?