Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!deccrl!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!mucs!m1!bevan From: bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Survey Results : Perl vs Icon vs .... Message-ID: Date: 5 Apr 91 07:46:33 GMT References: <3252@charon.cwi.nl> <1472@optima.cs.arizona.edu> Sender: news@cs.man.ac.uk Distribution: comp Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester Lines: 30 In-reply-to: kwalker@cs.arizona.edu's message of 3 Apr 91 16:12:35 GMT In article <1472@optima.cs.arizona.edu> Kenneth Walker writes: >In article <3252@charon.cwi.nl>, guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) writes: >> There is no excuse for not providing a decent Unix interface for a >> language that runs under Unix. Leaving it up to local initiative >> ("customization") is fatal for portability. > >The argument applies equally to the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, OS/2, >MPW on the Macintosh, CMS, VMS, and VMS. That's a lot of work! >Actually there are some operating system specific functions, mostly >supplied by those who did the ports and other members of the user >community. My point is that implementing and supporting such interfaces >requires resources. True, but there should be a distinction between adding the interfaces to the base language and adding them as library support. One of the advantages of Python as I see it is that it has a good library mechanism. This allows you to hide all the system specific details in a library (and in a different namespace) rather than cluttering up the base language. The Python method is borrowed from Modula II, which, although not a great language, is a definite step up from languages like C and Pascal. Unfortunately due to a number of reasons, (doesn't look like C? European?) Modula II never caught on in a big way and thus I don't think a standard set of libraries was ever produced. This is often used as a stick to beat Modula II with. However, most people seem to ignore the fact that until ANSIfication, the C library situation was not exactly stable. Stephen J. Bevan bevan@cs.man.ac.uk