Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!l.cc.purdue.edu!cik
From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Multi-compilers
Summary: Utility involves easy-to-use notation
Keywords: design, source
Message-ID: <2581@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 21 Sep 90 14:17:38 GMT
References: <9009110403.AA03158@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> <2576@l.cc.purdue.edu> <9206@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 35

In article <9206@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, wendt@ives.cs.colostate.edu (alan l wendt) writes:
> In article <2576@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> 
> =The language can be produced, and presumably compilers can be written.
> =But it must take the approach that everything is possible, and that 
> =utility is more important than esthetics.
> 
> Sounds like PL/I to me.

The problem with PL/I and assemblers is the poor notation.  This even 
occurs with the present languages, to more of an extent than many would
recognize.  One of the important advantages of languages is the use of
overloaded operators and relations, and converient use of standard
mathematical notation.  

Why is there an absolute value function rather than an absolute value
operator?  Only because when Fortran was written, they were limited to
a 48 character set (IBM punched cards, at the time).  This is also why
** was used for exponentiation, and even * for multiplication.  I have
used a dialect of Fortran which overloaded some of the "standard" functions,
so that absolute value, logarithm, mod, etc., did not have to have any modifier
indicating the type(s) of the arguments.  The compiler did the appropriate
analysis.

A language is a set of macros to be interpreted by the compiler into machine
procedures.  There is no good reason why the user should not be allowed to
add macros in convenient notation to this list, nor why many of the restric-
tions on the current macros need be there.  If the machine can do something,
the user should be able to invent a notation to do it, if necessary.  For
example, I find the general vector operation on the CYBER 205, with its dozen
optional fields, easy to explain in a notation easy to read and write.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)	{purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!cik(UUCP)