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From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Multi-compilers -- The ``Ideal'' Programming language ??
Keywords: design
Message-ID: <6618@uwm.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 90 01:50:52 GMT
References: <9009110403.AA03158@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> <1990Sep25.025517.25446@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
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Reply-To: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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In article <1990Sep25.025517.25446@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> md89mch@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Martin Howe) writes:
>> Different languages are designed to do different things better.
>
>I would go further: different programming pradigms do things better. This
>is obvious; but the solution, while equally obvious, doesn't seem to have been
>tried [except Trilogy ?] ...

This is precisely what I meant, and gave the Prolog/C example to stress
this.  The particular multi-compiler I'm developing integrates programming
languages from all the 4 programing language paradigms you mention: C++ --
an object oriented language; C, Pascal, BASIC, and FORTRAN -- imperative
languages; LISP, and Miranda -- functional (and quasi-functional) languages;
and Prolog (a logic programming language).

You've mentioned in the subsequent text the ideal you'd like to see where a
language becomes almost flexible enough to allow user-defineable syntax.
Prolog already allows for this to a significant degree, though it is grossly
underutilized, judging by the number of virtually unreadable Prolog programs
I've been able to take and very nearly convert into English, with
prepositions, verbs, and so on.  C++ has this feature to a smaller degree,
Haskell (and probably Miranda) goes almost as far as Prolog.
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