Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!turing.toronto.edu!holt
From: holt@turing.toronto.edu (Ric Holt)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Levels of Mastery [of a programming language]
Message-ID: <89Mar20.170837est.4597@turing.toronto.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 89 22:08:22 GMT
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Lines: 30

>From: janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen)
>Subject: Re: Good Design Strategies <Was comments on comments>
>
>Modula-3 and Turing both seem to be nice languages.  But I feel that we
>are past the point where a language that has all the "good" SE features
>can really be small and easy to learn.  We just know more about what
>helps to build good code.  What we need is a language that can be learned
>(and used) in steps, as a person learns the methodological steps that drive
>each part of the language.

In response to Bill Janssen's wish for a language that can be learned in
parts...

One of the design goals of the Turing language was to support "levels of
mastery".  You can learn a little of Turing to do a little programming.
Or a lot to do a lot.  Turing is, for example, used instead of BASIC
or Pascal in high schools, and is as easy to learn as BASIC.
It is also used to write Polyx (multi-CPU Unix) and its own portable
compiler.

Many Turing features "fold out" to provide increasing sophistication
to increasingly sophisticated users.  For example:
	put x
	put x : 10
	put x : 10 : 2
	put x : 10 : 2 : 1
These specify, in order, default (simple) output, output width of 10,
number of fractional digits (2), and number of exponent digits (1).

	Ric Holt