Re: Time for a new language?

From	torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.misc
Subject	Re: Time for a new language?
References	<isir0b$246$2@speranza.aioe.org> <27f391e528bef754bbbe3b05f7241046@dizum.com> <isjhsq$vt8$1@speranza.aioe.org>
Date	2011-06-14 16:45 +0200
Message-ID	<7zei2wh3p8.fsf@ask.diku.dk> (permalink)
Organization	SunSITE.dk - Supporting Open source

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"Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> writes:

> Low Level: Assembly Language
> High Level: C, C++, Java (but a different animal from C, C++)
> Higher Level: Scripting Languages
>
> Java can be between High and Higher, but it's nothing I need to worry 
> about. 

One way of seeing the distinction is how removed from a particular
physical machine the language is: The less assumptions a langauge makes
about the machine, the higher level.  Most language scan be implemented
on any Turing-complete machines, but if the physical machine does not
fit the assumptions of the language, you will either have suboptimal
performance or lose portability of programs.  C, for example, makes few
assumptions about the wordsize, and it is indeed possible to implement C
on a machine using 24-bit one's complement integers with no byte
addressing, but you wouldn't expect to run very many unmodified C
programs on this, as most programmers assume two's complement and at
least (or exactly) 32 bits and byte addressability.

That more or less fits the above list, but puts Java at a higher level
than C and C++ and scripting languages not (much) above Java, since Java
makes fairly few assumptions about specific machines.  It does, however,
implicitly assume that integers are 32-bit two's complement, which is a
good fit to most machines at the time it was designed, but is hardly
abstract and removed from assumptions about machines.

Most scripting languages make similar assumptions about integer ranges,
but there are exceptions.  Lua (IIRC) uses only floating-point numbers,
but assumes these are IEEE double precision FP.  A few languages (like
Scheme) have unbounded integers, but most of these allow bitwise
operations on integers that assume (unbounded) two's complement
notation, i.e., that -1 is the infinite sequence of 1 bits.

Note that this only gives a partial order on levelness: A language may
make more assumptions than another about some aspects of the machine
(such as number range) and fewer asssumptions about other aspects (such
as byte addressibility or endianness).

Another way to see language level is how much a programmer needs to
specify to solve a given problem: The more you have to specify, the
lower level the language.  For example, GC implies higher level than
(unsafe) manual freeing of memory, foreach-loops on collections or
vectors imply higher level than for-loops with explicit sequence of
indices and so on.  This, too, is not a total ordering as some languages
might require strict sequential loops but include GC while others may
have parallel loops but no GC.

	Torben

Thread

Re: Time for a new language? Jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2011-05-03 18:58 -0700
  Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-06 10:16 -0500
    Re: Time for a new language? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-06 21:45 +0200
      Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-06 13:10 -0700
        Re: Time for a new language? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201106.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-06-08 14:09 +0200
          Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-08 12:56 -0500
            Re: Time for a new language? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-09 02:31 +0200
              Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-09 09:10 -0500
              Re: Time for a new language? cri@tiac.net (Richard Harter) - 2011-06-09 16:37 +0000
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-09 10:39 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-10 04:46 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-10 12:15 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-08 11:03 -0700
      Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-06 16:47 -0500
        Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-07 01:17 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 03:07 -0700
            Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-07 04:21 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-06-07 11:26 +0100
            Re: Time for a new language? pete <pfiland@mindspring.com> - 2011-06-07 07:45 -0400
              Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 13:02 -0700
            Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-07 12:49 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? gremnebulin <peterdjones@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-13 16:36 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-17 10:25 +1200
            Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-16 23:11 -0700
              Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-17 01:39 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? "H.J. Sander Bruggink" <sander.bruggink@uni-due.de> - 2011-06-17 11:05 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-17 02:54 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-17 10:55 -0700
            Re: Time for a new language? tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2011-06-17 00:55 -0700
        Re: Time for a new language? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201106.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-06-08 23:54 +0200
          Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-08 17:37 -0500
        Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-14 10:23 +0000
        Re: Time for a new language? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2011-06-14 16:45 +0200
          Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-14 15:11 -0700
          Re: Time for a new language? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2011-06-15 01:41 -0400
            Re: Time for a new language? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-15 15:40 +0200
          Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-16 09:32 +0000
            Re: Time for a new language? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201106.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-06-17 03:25 +0200
              Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-17 08:38 +0000
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 07:42 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-17 12:59 +0000
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 08:48 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-17 14:07 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-19 15:57 +0000
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-20 13:21 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201106.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-06-17 22:10 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 07:47 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? Marco van de Voort <marcov@turtle.stack.nl> - 2011-06-17 13:02 +0000
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 09:06 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 07:53 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-17 13:37 -0700
                Re: Time for a new language? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-17 19:25 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201106.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2011-06-22 09:41 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2011-06-22 11:06 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2011-06-22 19:30 +0200
                Re: Time for a new language? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-06-22 10:21 +0100
              Re: Time for a new language? "Tony" <nospam@myisp.net> - 2011-06-17 07:37 -0500
                Re: Time for a new language? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-17 11:18 -0700

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