Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ho95e!wcs
From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: First Languages (yet again)
Message-ID: <1983@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 88 05:10:04 GMT
References: <4022@ames.arpa> <2400002@otter.HP.COM> <932@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <2781@omepd> <3730@megaron.arizona.edu> <2809@omepd>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46323-Bill.Stewart,2G218,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 15

In article <2809@omepd> pcm@iwarpo3.UUCP (Phil C. Miller) writes:
:The generalization inferred by this is that any programmer not exposed on
:day one to declarative languages is brain-damaged.  This covers 99.99999%
:of programmers.  Too bad, if only Donald Knuth and Per Brinch Hansen had seen
:ML before they were ruined.
	I'd pay a lot for a version of Knuth's books with the algorithms
	translated into a reasonable language instead of MIX.  I don't
	mean lisp, since his points about knowing what the machine's
	really doing are correct, but Algol had been around for more
	than 10 years, and it was *designed* for writing algorithms
	readably.  Even his "English-language" descriptions are mostly
	spaghetti-code.
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs