Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!otter!kers
From: kers@otter.hple.hp.com (Christopher Dollin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Languages and learning (was: Philosophy of C)
Message-ID: <2400003@otter.hple.hp.com>
Date: 27 Jan 88 16:37:57 GMT
References: <3473@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories,Bristol,UK.
Lines: 28

Peter Schachte says:

> I think it's pretty important that an introductory
> course use an interpreted language, so users don't have to start out by
> learning too much extraneous stuff, like running compilers.

repeat 1e4 times
    'Compiled languages NEED NOT be non-incremental\n'.pr
endrepeat;

The assumtion in Peter's note seemed to be that it was the fact that the Lisp
was INTERPRETED which was important for teaching purposes. In fact 
interpretation has little to do with it - it's the ability to build programs
incrementally. An incremental compiler will do the trick

Proof by existance - Poplog. All of Pop11, Prolog, Common Lisp, and ML run
COMPILED in this environment, not interpreted, but you can develop programs
incrementally, redefine procedures, etc.

Oh, I suppose you don't get as much fancy single-stepping with compiled code.
Don't seem to miss it ... 





Regards,
Kers                                    | "Why Lisp if you can talk Poperly?"