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From: lindsay@cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk (Lindsay F. Marshall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Mesa is a dreadful language?
Message-ID: <2247@cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 04:19:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: cheviot.2247
Posted: Fri Jul 10 04:19:02 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 14:02:58 EDT
References:  <415@unisoft.UUCP> <2229@cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk> <749@unc.cs.unc.edu>
Reply-To: lindsay@cheviot (Lindsay F. Marshall)
Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE17RU
Lines: 59

In article <749@unc.cs.unc.edu> rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) writes:
>Interesting opinion.  Would you mind defending your opinion with
>some facts (or even just some reasons)?

I just think the language is too verbose. I hate Pascal with an intensity
you cannot even begin to conceive, and Mesa is really just Pascal with a few
bells and whistles. One of the other major problems is the environment in
which it lifes. Perhaps if Mesa werent embedded inside all the XDE stuff
(where my Mesa experience coems from) it might seem better. I doubt it.
(Though look what C is like under XDE/Viewpoint - hello.c takes 6 pages
of code!!!) I also think that the style rules promulgated by the Mesa
community make for unreadable, incomprehensible programs.

>Oh, come now.  Mesa syntax worse than Ada?  How many syntax rules
>does Mesa have?  How many does Ada have?  (Offhand I have no idea,
>although I have seen collected syntax rules for both.)

I didnt say anything about the amount of syntax! Ada programs look much
cleaner than Mesa ones, at least in my opinion.

> "Ridiculous"
>is a fairly subjective word -- would you mind at least telling us
>what you mean by "ridiculous", or give some examples

Ridiculous means "deserving or inviting ridicule".  Mesa programs always
induce that response in me.  Great masses of dense code that dont do
very much.  Again I am talking about programming in Mesa in the XDE
environment, in a sensible environment perhaps it wouldnt look so bad.

>As for type safety, I have looked at (and worked on) large programs
>written in Mesa, and they did not make "massive" use of loophole. 
>To be sure, there were 'loophole's used, but at those places where
>the type of something was being changed, so as to facilitate
>stronger type checking elsewhere.  Not massive, by any means.

The programs I have looked at used loophole a lot, for what reason's were
never clear to me - I find the language incomprehensible. I find C's
method of coercions much easier to understand use.

>Would you have us go the C route, where loophole is unnecessary because
>everything is an int?

If you believe that about C then you dont understand the language very well!!

I have this fight (C v Mesa) with lots of people. I really detest Mesa and
other Pascal clones (I dont like Ada or Modula 2 very much either). I DONT
think that C is the best language in the world either!! But it lets me express
what I want in clear easy to read and understand ways, without baroque syntax
and without wearing out the keyboard typing all those enormous keywords....
(BTW I find the Berkeley style of C programming almost as unreadable
as Mesa........)

Lindsay

-- 
Lindsay F. Marshall
JANET: lindsay@uk.ac.newcastle.cheviot  ARPA: lindsay%cheviot.newcastle@ucl-cs
PHONE: +44-91-2329233                   UUCP: !ukc!cheviot!lindsay
"How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?"