Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!csnjr
From: csnjr@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Classifying programming-language designers.
Message-ID: <921@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 27 Jan 88 12:48:05 GMT
References: <4049@ames.arpa>
Distribution: comp
Organization: LFCS, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 29

> In article <4777@watdragon.waterloo.edu> djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon) writes:
>>For a humorous but insightful classification of programming language
>>designers take a look at the book, "Lucid, the Dataflow Programming
>>Language," by William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, Academic Press,
>>1975.  His classifications are:
>>	 1) Cowboys
>>	 2) Wizards
>>	 3) Preachers
>>	 4) Boffins
>>	 5) Handymen
>>	 6) Repairmen

The LUCID stuff is quite fun to read. After reading it, I tried to decide
which of these patronising categories is most appropriate for the designers
of LUCID...

Seriously, though. Wadge and his team spend, I think, an entire chapter of
their book just slagging off every other field of language and/or system
design, and then propose that the answer is dataflow machines and languages.
And how far has this rather intolerant and opinionated campaign got them?


Quite so.
-- 
Nick Rothwell,	Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh.
		nick%lfcs.ed.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
		<Atlantic Ocean>!mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick
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