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From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: How to select the best programming language
Message-ID: <4690@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 1-Jul-84 14:37:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4690
Posted: Sun Jul  1 14:37:39 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 16:22:33 EDT
References: <1266@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 31

Have a look at "Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages: Ada, C,
Pascal", ed. by Alan Feuer and Narain Gehani (Bell Labs), 1984, pub. by
Prentice-Hall.  ISBN 0-13-154857-3 (hard) or 0-13-154840-9 (paper).  The
paper edition cost me $22 in Canada.

The book is a useful collection of 15 papers on the subject, starting with
the March 82 ACM Computing Surveys article "A Comparison of ... C & Pascal"
by Feuer & Gehani.  This paper addresses the specific question of which of
C and Pascal to use for particular applications.

Other papers ("PL" = "Programming Language"):
Pascal vs. C: A Subjective Comparison (P. Mateti)
A Comparison of Pascal and Ada (B. Wichmann)
A Comparison of ... Ada, Pascal, C (A. Evans)
An Assessment of ... Pascal (N. Wirth)
UNIX(tm) Time-Sharing System: The C PL (Ritchie et al)
An Early Assessment of Ada... (Gehani)
Critical Comments on ... Pascal (A. Habermann)
More Comments on ... Pascal (Lecarme and Desjardins)
Why Pascal is not my Favourite PL (Kernighan)
Type Syntax in C... (B. Anderson)
A Methodology for Comparing PL's (Feuer & Gehani)
A Comparison of PL's for Software Engineering (Shaw et al)
A Critical Comparison of Several PL Implementations (Boom & De Jong)
PL's: What to Demand and How to Assess Them (Wirth)

The papers show the beginnings of solid methodologies for comparing languages,
and have a lot of good ideas, but I think it's safe to say that the state-
of-the-art is to use "educated intuition" in making choices.

p. rowley, U. Toronto