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Groups > comp.lang.misc > #2113

Re: Wirth-ian languages

From Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups comp.lang.misc
Subject Re: Wirth-ian languages
Date 2014-05-01 17:10 +0000
Organization Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID <20140501095725.877@kylheku.com> (permalink)
References (5 earlier) <ljmifb$1gn$1@dont-email.me> <op.xe11uyjf6zenlw@localhost> <1965jbmywu22u$.9o9wv0bq5csu$.dlg@40tude.net> <Coa8v.127640$t%4.123890@fx04.am4> <1oz1ou4obfdrc.ihri7rhvc8gt$.dlg@40tude.net>

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On 2014-05-01, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 18:27:08 +0100, BartC wrote:
>
>> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
>> news:1965jbmywu22u$.9o9wv0bq5csu$.dlg@40tude.net...
>>> On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 21:46:00 -0400, Rod Pemberton wrote:
>>>
>>>> So, let's list some (what I recall right now...) of what I think
>>>> C gets correct:
>>>>
>>>> 1) pointers
>>>
>>> Since C did almost everything wrong.
>> 
>> Are you taking account of the fact that C is a low-level language? If not, 
>> then you can argue that any assembly language does everything 'wrong'.
>
> Oh, but this is different. Firstly, of course, you should define the
> "level". Presumably it is a level of abstraction away, but from what?

As a starting point, a good "rough" definition of a low level of abstraction
means that programs for diverse appliactions look the same.

If I look at the insides of a text editor, cryptographic library, image
recognition, device driver, or game, and they all look like approximately the
same cruft (for instance a column of machine language instructions), then they
are at a low level of abstraction compared to their application domains.

A very good definition of Abstraction Level comes from the Tunes project:

http://tunes.org/wiki/abstraction_20level.html

Especially the criterion in the last paragraph.

"A set of programs is more high-level than another one if for each problem
solved by the second set of programs, there exist a higher-level program that
solves the same problem in the first set."

A "program" can be taken to represent not necessarily an executable sitting
on your disk, but a procedure, machine language instruction or any capsule
of computation.

So the criterion explains why machine language is low level. For any given
problem solved using machine language, the same "set of programs" is applied:
the same bag of machine instructions. This is why the solutions look the same.
If I see 25 lines of disassembly listing, I have no clue whether I'm looking at
a text editor, device driver, or image recognition code, since it's just a
combination of the "programs": the little routines in the instruction set like
"compare that register to that other one".

> Often repeated proposition that C is close to the hardware = not really
> abstracts the machine, is plain wrong. Most of C primitives do not really
> match the hardware architecture.  In that sense C is by no means low-level.

Level is really a lattice. There is some ideal awy of expressing what I'm
doing. And multiple, though diverse, directions away from that are "lower
level".

Processing data with Unix piping and text manipulation is often at an
inappropriate level for that data. It's low-level in some sense in that it
never gets away from the irrelevant details of how the printed representation
of the data is delimited, and the code doesn't really express whatis going
on; it just says "I'm a mass of shell cruft that has to be read in painstaking
detail to decode what is going on".

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Thread

Wirth-ian languages bruce axtens <bugmagnet@outlook.com> - 2014-04-28 16:23 +0000
  Re: Wirth-ian languages Joe Hynes <theda@southpark.net> - 2014-04-28 17:31 +0000
    Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 18:47 +0000
      Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-28 20:35 +0100
        Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 20:18 +0000
          Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-28 22:50 +0100
            Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 00:03 +0100
              Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 23:51 +0000
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 07:59 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 10:04 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 11:33 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-29 07:41 -0400
            Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 21:46 -0400
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 08:24 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-29 07:33 -0400
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 14:38 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-30 21:28 -0400
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-05-01 10:44 +0100
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-04-29 09:59 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-29 15:51 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-04-30 10:57 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-30 15:47 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-01 10:18 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-05-01 16:56 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-02 10:10 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-30 18:27 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-01 10:18 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-05-01 17:10 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-02 09:22 +0200
  Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 20:59 -0400
    Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 21:10 -0400
    Re: Wirth-ian languages Nils M Holm <news2009@t3x.org> - 2014-04-29 07:52 +0000
    Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 09:45 +0100
  Re: Wirth-ian languages Jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 05:37 -0700

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