Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!bnfb
From: bnfb@june.cs.washington.edu (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Little vs. Large Languages
Message-ID: <4096@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 28 Jan 88 19:28:04 GMT
References: <3928@ames.arpa> <2400001@otter.HP.COM>
Reply-To: bnfb@uw-june.UUCP (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 29

I see the problem as more of a continuum between everything being a
little language and having only one huge language.  Never approach
is "right" --- perhaps there are one or more points in the middle
where people would be happy.

UNIX is an example of system with a number of little languages:
    AWK, GREP, SORT command line, ...
and a couple large ones:
    C, LaTeX/TeX, troff, ...

The MacIntosh has completely Huge languages:
    each application has it's own

Perhaps a smaller set of languages and a computing environment to
help hook them together would be possible.  I claim that there are a
small finite number of types of computing:
    text processing
    numeric processing
    database lookup
    graphics
    others?
Granted, these are inter-related, but perhaps we could form a
moderate langauge for each, and provide a good environment to work
with them.

Ack.  I've gone on long enough.  If this article generates any heat
(or light), I'll post some more ideas.

Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson