Path: csiph.com!3.us.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "Derek M. Jones" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2018 13:15:12 +0100 Organization: virginmedia.com Lines: 24 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <18-04-026@comp.compilers> References: <49854345-f940-e82a-5c35-35078c4189d5@gkc.org.uk> <18-03-103@comp.compilers> <18-03-042@comp.compilers> <18-03-047@comp.compilers> <18-03-075@comp.compilers> <18-03-079@comp.compilers> <18-03-101@comp.compilers> <18-04-002@comp.compilers> <18-04-003@comp.compilers> <18-04-004@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="53509"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: design, history Posted-Date: 10 Apr 2018 11:09:55 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Content-Language: en-US Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2047 George, >>> Modern popular languages are neither powerful nor easy to learn. >> >> What evidence do you have for this? > > I disagree about "easy to learn" - there are plenty of languages that > are easy to learn. But as to the question of "power" ... Powerful and easy to learn is a claim that proponents of every language make. It is a marketing statement. If you ask them how their language can be more powerful than other Turing complete languages, hey invariably switch to saying that it's easy to write powerful programs (whatever they might be). Something like 30 languages per year get non-trivial implementations. So the question to ask is, how does your language compare to the 30 languages created last year? They invariably have not checked out last year's languages. Then ask about comparing against the 30 from the year before, and so on. Inventing languages is invariably vanity research. Fine, but let's not take anything claimed seriously.