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
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