Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!noao!arizona!gudeman
From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Need reference for "firewall" modularization
Message-ID: <26931@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 90 21:55:59 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 29

In article  <1087@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> nick@cs.edinburgh.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes:
]Ok, I stand corrected. The way I read the original article is that there
]are problems with referring to variables which are unassigned or which
]go out of scope (dangling pointers and the like). Higher-level languages
]don't have these problems...

If that's what you meant, then I agree, assuming we are using the same
definition of "higher-level" (but I don't think we are).  When you say

]...the fact that assignment is non-existent (or kept
]to a minimum),

I suspect that you have a mental linkage between the term
"higher-level" and the term "applicative".  You aren't alone in this,
but I think there are two distinct concepts there, and they should be
kept seperate.  I _will_ agree with

]the fact that the languages are garbage-collected and
]heap-safe, make them "better" in this sense.

since if you don't have automatic storage managment, then you are
extremely limited in the types of first-class objects you can have.
In fact, I am tempted to define "higher-level" in terms of the
built-in data types the language suports.
-- 
					David Gudeman
Department of Computer Science
The University of Arizona        gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
Tucson, AZ 85721                 noao!arizona!gudeman