Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!shelby!csli!poser
From: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <12345@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 20 Feb 90 21:41:44 GMT
References: <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <2346@castle.ed.ac.uk> <12336@csli.Stanford.EDU> <2386@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Reply-To: poser@csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser)
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
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In article <2386@castle.ed.ac.uk> nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes:
>
>True; but the original article said something about programmers being
>able to agree on the nice features of a language; whereas what you're
>saying above (and I agree) is that this will never happen,

Yes, I agree. Different languages are good for different tasks,
and even within a given area there are real differences in individual
taste. Attempts to design a language that does everything generally
seem to produce unpleasant results (predictable swipe at ADA ommitted
for brevity.)