Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.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 16:56:24 +0100 Organization: virginmedia.com Lines: 35 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <18-04-030@comp.compilers> References: <18-04-029@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="89747"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: history, design Posted-Date: 10 Apr 2018 14:07:07 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:2049 Martin, > On 08/04/18 14:21, Derek M. Jones wrote: >>> Modern popular languages are neither powerful nor easy to learn. >> >> What evidence do you have for this? > > The C standard is over 700 pages: not exactly an easy read. By evidence I mean an evaluation of multiple languages. Here are some languages from 1957. Were they powerful and easy to learn? http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2017/05/21/evidence-for-28-possible-compilers-in-1957/ ....> memorise and avoid using if they want to write conformant and > compatible code. I thought we were talking about powerful and easy to learn? > On the other hand, the Revised^4 Report on the Algorithmic Language > Scheme ("Dedicated to the Memory of ALGOL 60") is only a 55 page manual > but it includes the full syntax and semantics of the language. My question was about powerful and easy to learn. Not about number of pages in the language specification. [In my experience, any language that is semantically similar to languages you already know is easy to learn. For example, I find python comprehensions obvious and easy to use because they're just a syntax for a function mapping. I know other python programmers who find them baffling and always write "for" loops instead, presumably because the languages they'd used didn't do much function mapping. -John]