Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!joyce!sri-unix!garth!smryan
From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Many people's opinions on computer languages
Message-ID: <1399@garth.UUCP>
Date: 13 Sep 88 02:00:38 GMT
References: <3938@enea.se>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23

>It surprises me that these ideas still hang on. In these days when 
>man power is expensive and machine power is cheap the computer should
>do as much job possible. This includes translating abstract descriptions
>of what to do and make these translation as effective as possible.

The problem is: who creates these abstract descriptions?

In C, Kernighan and Ritchie made up a set of operators that work well
on some machines and miserably on others. Instructions available on
some machines are unavailable in C because of assumptions about what
should and should not be done.

>My opinion is that the language should help the programmer to be
>as portable as possible. This means that he should be able to
>encapsulate OS-calls and similar. (Hardware-dependent parts should 
>really be avoided or cut down to a minimum.)

Procedure/operator/class definitions all help make code portable. I don't
recall anybody saying get rid of these.

To me, the question is: Do the powers that be define exactly those
operators which are sufficient and cast all others (and the cpus) into
the Outer Darkness? Or do we provide access the hardware and an
appropriate encapsulation technique?