Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!att!ihlpb!nevin1 From: nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Liber) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Many people's opinions on computer languages Message-ID: <8781@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Date: 23 Sep 88 00:03:36 GMT References: <3938@enea.se> <923@l.cc.purdue.edu> <382@quintus.UUCP> <822@cernvax.UUCP> <929@l.cc.purdue.edu> Reply-To: nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 34 In article <929@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >In article <822@cernvax.UUCP>, hjm@cernvax.UUCP (Hubert Matthews) writes: >> One of the main ideas behind high-level languages is to provide a virtual >> machine that is mostly independent of the low-level hardware. >Just as I find that a student who has had a statistical >methods course has a much harder time understanding statistical concepts than >one who does not, Nice statement on our educational system. >I suspect that someone who learns to program in a highly >restricted language will never understand what hardware is capable of and >can be capable of. Not (necessarily) true. Since they can abstract more than if they had to program in a low-level language (assuming you include languages like C in your definition of highly restricted languages), they can probably get the hardware to do more things than a programmer who programs only in low-level languages. >My virtual machine would have all operations that can >be thought of, not just the ones I can imagine. Hmmm... You want a virtual machine that have all the operations that can be thought of. Sounds very close to a Universal Turing Machine, which cannot exist! The size of your virtual machine must not only be finite, but it must also have an upper bound. -- _ __ NEVIN J. LIBER ..!att!ihlpb!nevin1 (312) 979-4751 IH 4F-410 ' ) ) Anyone can survive being frozen in liquid nitrogen; / / _ , __o ____ it's surviving the *thawing* that counts :-). / (_