Xref: utzoo comp.arch:6887 comp.lang.c:13629 comp.lang.misc:2060 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!texbell!sugar!ficc!uunet!kddlab!titcca!sragwa!wsgw!socslgw!diamond From: diamond@csl.sony.JUNET (Norman Diamond) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Machine-independent intermediate languages Message-ID: <10037@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> Date: 14 Oct 88 00:16:36 GMT References: <853@goofy.megatest.uucp> <831@etive.ed.ac.uk> Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan Lines: 23 In article <831@etive.ed.ac.uk>, db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry (LFCS)) writes: (About C and Lisp...) > As an aside, I've heard both disparagingly described as "portable assemblers" > (and I've heard their proponents take that as a compliment). Both languages' inventors created them expressly to be assemblers with a portable syntax. The description is not disparaging at all. Only certain critics who intend the description to be disparaging in fact reveal their gross ignorance. The phrase "portable assembler" is unfortunately ambiguous. This has led users to expect C PROGRAMS to be as portable as the language's SYNTAX. Since their demands have been listened to, C is losing its original capabilities. Anyone who wants to write portable PROGRAMS should use another language. Lisp pretty well fits the bill of machine-independence, despite its original purpose of assisting the coding of machine-language (not assembler-language) programs. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above opinions are my own. | Norman Diamond If they're also your opinions, | Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc. you're infringing my copyright. | diamond%csl.sony.jp@relay.cs.net