Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Modern languages (Slight return)
Message-ID: <4118@killer.UUCP>
Date: 18 May 88 06:36:27 GMT
References: <3292@enea.se>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 28

in article <3292@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) says:
> Pam Arnold (pmjc@tut.cc.rochester.edu.UUCP) writes:
>>This one may beg the question, but if any shop is REALLY SERIOUS about
>>this sort of problem, why not switch to a more modern language, especially
>>one that is more tailored to the requirements of software engineering? For
>>example Modula-2 and Ada (no flames, just add your own to the list).

Because some of us have performance guidelines to meet (like, it has to be
finished calculating in 1/30th of a second, i.e. a video frame), and thus
can't use something like Module-2 or Ada. Heck, some of us have to use
ASSEMBLER! (YOU try processing an entire hi-res video frame... unless you want
to go with expensive custom hardware...).  Besides, every Ada compiler I've
ever seen has been a pig that generated enormous code. Modula-2 would be a
good choice, but on the machine I'm using, the "C" compiler generates decent
code (ah, that good ole' register optimization parade!), and the only Modula-2
for that particular machine is buggy and doesn't allow access to the operating
system (no marks against Modula-2, there... I've used a very good Modula-2 on
a VAX... but we must admit that the availability of good Modula-2 compilers is
limited). 

Choice of implementation language should have little effect upon software
engineering of a product.  The only exception is that there are paridigms
reasonable in Lisp that you would never want to try in Fortran....

--
    Eric Lee Green                     {cuae2,ihnp4}!killer!elg
         Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509              
"Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?"