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From: BUDDENBERGRA@usc-isi.arpa (Rex Buddenberg)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: language choice: Pascal, c, or Forth
Message-ID: <1368@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 9-Jan-86 00:55:22 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1368
Posted: Thu Jan  9 00:55:22 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jan-86 05:41:37 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 39

For the language choice discussion...

When considering programmer time and code readability, we are
getting near a very important, but poorly understood aspect
of software production.

Picture yourself as a software engineer with several programmers
working for you on a project.  You in turn are responsible 
to other folks in the corporation who at their level
of abstraction are interested in what your team is doing.
You have several problems that you want your programming
language to make as tractable as possible:
   1) The programmers gotta be kept from tromping all over
each others' memory space, variables and data structures.
This is what Pascal and later structured languages are
designed to do.
   2) You need to be able to read the code produced by others.
Code is written once but read a hundred times.  I learned
to program by reading others' code, and you want as much
help from the language as there is.  My personal experience
is that neither C nor Forth make it here; Pascal comes
closer, but Modula is better.
   3) Explain to your boss, who is not a programmer, what
the program is doing.  If you want your project to
thrive (read bread on the table), this is a requirement.
Which would you rather try and explain -- Forth or Pascal?

Be careful about judgin the merits of a language on small,
solo programs.  Utility programs of a few k can be done
in most any languages, particularly if you are working
alone on the project.  But a larger project
with a team (or a larger project by yourself) needs
readable as well as writable code.

Keep up the discussion, this is good...
B

BUDDENBERGRA@USC-ISI
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