Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!decwrl!sun!chiba!khb From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?) Message-ID: <79153@sun.uucp> Date: 29 Nov 88 02:30:41 GMT References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <7724@boring.cwi.nl> <406@ubbpc.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.uucp Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 77 In article <406@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes: >Before we get embroiled in a meaningless argument, let me point out that there >are at least two criteria for success of a programming language: > success-1: having lots of neat design ideas, and > success-2: being widely adopted. text deleted re-ordered > I still maintain that this supports my earlier thesis: that committee- >designed languages fail and individually-designed languages succeed. Now that >I have defined success and failure more clearly, more people might agree. I appreciate your clarification of success, but I think your thesis remains unsupported. > > Here are some more opinions: > >Ada success-1? failure-2? small group (Ichbiah & Co.)? too early to tell, but since commercial shops are chosing it for new work (not yet in droves though) it may very well be a success-2. I would have classified Ada as a committee >Algol-60 success-1 failure-2 small group >Algol-68 success-1?? failure-2 committee Using US success as criteria for -2 seems a bit parochial >C success-1 success-2 small group >COBOL failure-1 success-2 committee COBOL did much right (as little as I like to admit it), failure-1 is not totally justified. >FORTRAN failure-1 success-2 small group FORTRAN was tied for first "high level language"...given its early appearance the original fortran should be classed as success-1. F88, while imperfect does (in the opnion of some) deserve a success-1. >FORTH failure-1 success-2? small group failure-2. >LISP success-1 failure-2(this is changing) small group "changing" not much in the big scheme of things... and its current form is the product of committee work. >Modula2 success-1 success-2 small group Failure-2. Perhaps this will change. Seperate i/o modules for each datatype and etc. make modula-2 an ugly language for applications ... whether there is a need for yet another systems programming language is debatable. >Pascal success-1 success-2 small group success-1 ?? Nearly every single early implementation had to massively extend it to make it useful. Code portability was nil, and etc. >PL/I failure-1 failure-2 large committee > The contention that committees have done worse than small groups is not supported by this simple tabulation. Futhermore if we weight the "votes" by the lines of code (or programmers fluent, or any other metric of size) committee designed languages had done much better. Keith H. Bierman It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus