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From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: comp.lang.functional
Message-ID: <1990Mar20.175000.1814@maths.nott.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Mar 90 17:50:00 GMT
References: <9003131617.AA02925@decwrl.dec.com> <2875@castle.ed.ac.uk> <572@enuxha.eas.asu.edu>
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
Lines: 23

In article <572@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> nelan@enuxha.eas.asu.edu
(George Nelan) writes:

>I just talked with Ed Ashcroft (Lucid) about this.  One theory is that the
>English (et al.) had to resort to math to do computers at the time the
>Americans (et al.) started using them (to actually do something) -- the
>English simply didn't have them. [...]

	Well, we had them.  I think that the machines that I used from
(say) 1965 to 1975 [Ferranti Atlas, EELM KDF9, ICL 1906A], though not as
well known in the USA as various IBMs, were at least as good.

	But it is certainly the case that there grew to be two different
styles of programming, the "think first and let's try to get this right"
school, and the "I need the results by yesterday" school.  I don't think
this was an English (or European) v. American split (though it could be
argued that it worked out somewhat that way).  A better case could be made
for it being a non-Fortran v. Fortran split, but that's another tin [:-)]
of worms.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk