Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!ethz!ethz-inf!marti
From: marti@inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Prolog's Pitfalls?
Message-ID: <29539@ethz-inf.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jul 90 19:36:05 GMT
References: <1990Jun18.221058.11331@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <3305@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <2952@skye.ed.ac.uk> <76740@cc.utah.edu>
Organization: Informatik ETH Zurich
Lines: 40

Editorial comment:
I know this doesn't really belong here, but I just can't keep my
mouth shut.  Judging from past experience, I'll probably soon regret
jumping into a fray on the net, anyway ...


In article <76740@cc.utah.edu> RCAPENER@cc.utah.edu writes in response
to articles by Jeff Dalton and Richard O'Keefe:

>Right now, I am not too happy at all about their Pascalization of
>C in the latest ANSI version.  Why the h**l couldn't they have added
>type complex and type BCD rather than worrying incessently about
>adding prototypes?  [ More flaming deleted ... ]

You should have heard Brian Kernighan (of K&R fame, no less) trying
to sell us the concept of function prototypes in ANSI C in 1986, at
the very place where Niklaus Wirth designed Pascal (around 1971)
and Modula-2 (in 1979).  It was definitely a case of preaching to
the converted, I can assure you.

At any rate, let me point out that the prototypes in C owe a lot to C++,
a language you seem to like (see below).



>And if some
>poor soul is incapable of working in 3 or more languages effectively,
>I choose to believe they are a dolt who shouldn't be in CS!  We have
>all too many in that class now.  For myself, that means C++, Prolog
>(wouldn't you have guessed that by now 8-)), LISP, and Sybase (or
>take your own pick of relational or object oriented data base).

I haven't heard of the language Sybase yet.  You wouldn't by chance be
talking about SQL (or the non-standard extension called Transact-SQL)?

-- 
Robert Marti                        Phone:    +41 1 254 72 60
Institut fur Informationssysteme
ETH-Zentrum                         Internet: marti@inf.ethz.ch
CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland         UUCP:     ...uunet!mcvax!ethz!marti