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This must be progress

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  This must be progress "Mr Emmanuel Roche, France" <roche182@laposte.net> - 2012-08-16 01:02 -0700
    Re: This must be progress sampsa <sampsal@gmail.com> - 2012-08-16 01:25 -0700
    Re: This must be progress "Henk SWT" <swt@tiscali.nl> - 2012-08-16 10:44 +0200
    Re: This must be progress John Crane <johncrane@nowhere.net> - 2012-08-16 12:38 -0700
    Re: This must be progress Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2012-08-18 00:53 +0700
      Re: This must be progress jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) - 2012-08-17 15:09 -0400
        Re: This must be progress The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-08-17 20:57 +0100
          Re: This must be progress GangGreene <GangGreene@invalid.com> - 2012-08-17 18:37 -0400
            Re: This must be progress The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-08-18 00:26 +0100
      Re: This must be progress "Mr Emmanuel Roche, France" <roche182@laposte.net> - 2012-08-18 01:40 -0700
        Re: This must be progress Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2012-08-18 13:24 +0000
        Re: This must be progress "Mr Emmanuel Roche, France" <roche182@laposte.net> - 2012-08-18 09:07 -0700
          Re: This must be progress Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2012-08-18 20:39 +0000
    Re: This must be progress Rob Doyle <radioengr@gmail.com> - 2012-08-17 16:38 -0700
      Re: This must be progress "dott.Piergiorgio" <chiedetelo@ask.me> - 2012-08-18 07:04 +0200
      Re: This must be progress "Mr Emmanuel Roche, France" <roche182@laposte.net> - 2012-08-18 01:02 -0700
        Re: This must be progress Zhu Feng <zhufeng@notmail.com> - 2012-08-20 00:28 +1000
          Re: This must be progress Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2012-08-20 01:19 +0700

#1646 — This must be progress

For the last weeks, I have (with others) been disassembling TREK-80.

Everybody knows that, despite having worked with about 25 Programming
Languages, BASIC is still my favorite, despite trying to use Dr. Logo,
which is so much more "High Level".

So, as usual, I wondered: "Is there something better?"

I made a search and found something named "Go", which seems to be used
internally by Google.

I read the FAQ, and found the following:

"No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that
time the computing landscape has changed tremendously.

There are several trends:

- Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not
faster.
- Dependency management is a big part of software development today
but the “header files” of languages in the C tradition are
antithetical to clean dependency analysis—and fast compilation.
- There is a growing rebellion against cumbersome type systems like
those of Java and C++, pushing people towards dynamically typed
languages such as Python and JavaScript.
- Some fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel
computation are not well supported by popular systems languages.
- The emergence of multicore computers has generated worry and
confusion.

We believe it's worth trying again with a new language, a concurrent,
garbage-collected language with fast compilation. Regarding the points
above:

- It is possible to compile a large Go program in a few seconds on a
single computer.
- Go provides a model for software construction that makes dependency
analysis easy and avoids much of the overhead of C-style include files
and libraries.
- Go's type system has no hierarchy, so no time is spent defining the
relationships between types. Also, although Go has static types the
language attempts to make types feel lighter weight than in typical OO
languages.
- Go is fully garbage-collected and provides fundamental support for
concurrent execution and communication.
- By its design, Go proposes an approach for the construction of
system software on multicore machines.

(...)

A simple C "hello, world" program compiled and linked statically using
gcc on Linux is around 750 kB, including an implementation of printf.
An equivalent Go program using fmt.Printf is around 1.2 MB, but that
includes more powerful run-time support."

Argh! "Hello, World!" is now 750 *KILO* bytes?

(For the record, the TREK-80 game that I am disassembling is 8K. And
it is a little bit more complex than "Hello, World!"...)

This must be progress...

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

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#1647

On Aug 16, 11:02 am, "Mr Emmanuel Roche, France"
<roche...@laposte.net> wrote:

> Argh! "Hello, World!" is now 750 *KILO* bytes?

My laptop has 16 GB of RAM, so that's 0.00447% of available memory :)

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#1648

Hallo Emmanuel,

What a coincidence.  A couple of days ago I too looked at Go.
I was searching for a 'modern' language to convert my programs to so other 
people can use my programs.
I still program in BASIC-80 (BASCOM) and FORTRAN-80. My programs, even 
complicated ones for my model rocket and electronics hobby, are seldom more 
than 5 kilo bytes.
But people are not willing to use programs unless they can input values by 
clicking dropdown lists or other graphical nonsense.
I tried to make a simple program in Go to input 2 values and make some 
calculations.
I was not able to find the input routine!
Modern languages are very frustrating.
I am experimenting with Arduino and Processing. The C++ and JAVA based 
languages don't even have input routines!
You have to write an awful lot of code just to input a simple value from the 
keyboard!

If you want a simple computer to program in BASIC, buy a Duinomite ( $ 35) 
plug in a keyboard and a VGA monitor and away you go. A computer that boots 
into BASIC. Just like the ones we had in the 80's.

I will stay with CP/M, BASIC-80 and FORTRAN-80. It works for me.

Greetings,
Henk Siewert

"Mr Emmanuel Roche, France" <roche182@laposte.net> schreef in bericht 
news:f2a87353-482e-44c7-9f49-400b824f29c5@cf4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
For the last weeks, I have (with others) been disassembling TREK-80.

Everybody knows that, despite having worked with about 25 Programming
Languages, BASIC is still my favorite, despite trying to use Dr. Logo,
which is so much more "High Level".

So, as usual, I wondered: "Is there something better?"

I made a search and found something named "Go", which seems to be used
internally by Google.

I read the FAQ, and found the following:

"No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that
time the computing landscape has changed tremendously.

There are several trends:

- Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not
faster.
- Dependency management is a big part of software development today
but the “header files” of languages in the C tradition are
antithetical to clean dependency analysis—and fast compilation.
- There is a growing rebellion against cumbersome type systems like
those of Java and C++, pushing people towards dynamically typed
languages such as Python and JavaScript.
- Some fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel
computation are not well supported by popular systems languages.
- The emergence of multicore computers has generated worry and
confusion.

We believe it's worth trying again with a new language, a concurrent,
garbage-collected language with fast compilation. Regarding the points
above:

- It is possible to compile a large Go program in a few seconds on a
single computer.
- Go provides a model for software construction that makes dependency
analysis easy and avoids much of the overhead of C-style include files
and libraries.
- Go's type system has no hierarchy, so no time is spent defining the
relationships between types. Also, although Go has static types the
language attempts to make types feel lighter weight than in typical OO
languages.
- Go is fully garbage-collected and provides fundamental support for
concurrent execution and communication.
- By its design, Go proposes an approach for the construction of
system software on multicore machines.

(...)

A simple C "hello, world" program compiled and linked statically using
gcc on Linux is around 750 kB, including an implementation of printf.
An equivalent Go program using fmt.Printf is around 1.2 MB, but that
includes more powerful run-time support."

Argh! "Hello, World!" is now 750 *KILO* bytes?

(For the record, the TREK-80 game that I am disassembling is 8K. And
it is a little bit more complex than "Hello, World!"...)

This must be progress...

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

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#1652

Use the right tool for the right job.

You just want to spit out a few bytes -- use assembly.

Leave the big complicated stuff for the guys that do it for a living.

We're hobbyists.  This should be fun, right?

-- 
-John
email: john_crane_Z@yahoodotcom
where: Z=12*5-1

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#1659

>>>>> Emmanuel Roche, France <roche182@laposte.net> writes:

	[Cross-posting to news:comp.os.linux.misc, for my records show
	that there was just three crossposts like this over the past two
	years.]

 > For the last weeks, I have (with others) been disassembling TREK-80.
 > Everybody knows that, despite having worked with about 25 Programming
 > Languages, BASIC is still my favorite,

	Is Perl or some dialect of Lisp among those, I wonder?

 > despite trying to use Dr. Logo, which is so much more "High Level".

 > So, as usual, I wondered: "Is there something better?"

 > I made a search and found something named "Go", which seems to be
 > used internally by Google.

 > I read the FAQ, and found the following:

 > "No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over
 > that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously.

[...]

 > A simple C "hello, world" program compiled and linked statically
 > using gcc on Linux is around 750 kB, including an implementation of
 > printf.  An equivalent Go program using fmt.Printf is around 1.2 MB,
 > but that includes more powerful run-time support."

 > Argh! "Hello, World!" is now 750 *KILO* bytes?

	Well, these figures are misleading at best.  What set of
	software, one may wonder, can fit, say, 2 MiB, if just a plain
	"Hello, world!" requires more than a third of that space?
	Surprisingly, such a small volume is enough to host a
	POSIX Shell, a decent selection of POSIX utilities (including
	printf(1) for the Shell), an HTTP client and a server, the same
	for Telnet, a Gzip compressor-expander, the same for Xz and
	LZMA, a full-screen editor (a Vi clone), hexdump(1), UUE and
	Base64 coders-decoders, and more.  And all of this on the very
	same system the plain "Hello, world" takes some 768 KiB.

	Check those "wireless router" boxes in a nearby computers
	store -- they're likely to rely on that collection.

 > (For the record, the TREK-80 game that I am disassembling is 8K.  And
 > it is a little bit more complex than "Hello, World!"...)

	Printing a message is not as simple as it may seem.  Consider,
	for instance:

$ date 
Fri Aug 17 17:40:56 UTC 2012
$ 

	Yes, date and time calculations are tricky, but doable even on
	smaller systems.  But what about the following?

$ LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 date 
vendredi 17 aou^t 2012, 17:40:56 (UTC+0000)
$ LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 date 
Fr 17. Aug 17:40:56 UTC 2012
$ LANG=eo.UTF-8 date 
ven Auxg 17 17:40:56 UTC 2012
$ LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8 date 
Ptn Avg 17 17:40:56 UTC 2012
$ 

	(I've manually downgraded UTF-8 to ASCII above, so that this
	article will remain ASCII.)

	And it's not just date(1), for it essentially only calls the
	strftime () function of the system library, which then does all
	the work.

	I'm quite sure one may come with a better example of when this
	"complexity" pays off, but for now, I hope it shows my point.

 > This must be progress...

	Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane was so much
	simpler than the airliners of today...

-- 
FSF associate member #7257	http://sf-day.org/

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#1665

> Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane was so much
> simpler than the airliners of today...

Ah, but that's the logic trap.
It LOOKS simple but the design was NOT enduring

1) turning involved the rudders and "wing warping":
   flexing the wings. The wings can't do that forever:
   the parts will fatigue.
2) although other flying machines use a "canard" design,
   the front control surface were moved to the tail,
   now known as "elevators"
3) Glenn Curtiss was forced to invent the
   aileron control surface to avoid the
   Wright Brothers' wing warping patent.
   Now all planes use that.
   Despite all the initial hostilities & competition
   between Curtiss and the Wrights, he beat them with
   more reliable designs (flying boat) and better engines,
   eventually taking over the Wright Brothers business.


Software is similar: that LOOKS simple
does not always mean it's more reliable
or can scale up.

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#1669

Jeff Jonas wrote:
>> Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane was so much
>> simpler than the airliners of today...
> 
> Ah, but that's the logic trap.
> It LOOKS simple but the design was NOT enduring
> 
> 1) turning involved the rudders and "wing warping":
>    flexing the wings. The wings can't do that forever:
>    the parts will fatigue.

Wood doesn't fatigue.



> 2) although other flying machines use a "canard" design,
>    the front control surface were moved to the tail,
>    now known as "elevators"
Very few flying machines use a canar layout, if for no better reason 
that to balance one generally required the heavy engine at the back. 
This, in a crash in a stick and linen frame usually killed the pilot.

The advantages of having a big lump in front to crash first, were soon 
noted, as were the deleterious effects of ingesting the large 
quaintities of castor oil.

> 3) Glenn Curtiss was forced to invent the
>    aileron control surface to avoid the
>    Wright Brothers' wing warping patent.
>    Now all planes use that.

Not entirely all, but close enough.

>    Despite all the initial hostilities & competition
>    between Curtiss and the Wrights, he beat them with
>    more reliable designs (flying boat) and better engines,
>    eventually taking over the Wright Brothers business.
> 
Indeed. The Wrights were in fact crap.


> 
> Software is similar: that LOOKS simple
> does not always mean it's more reliable
> or can scale up.



-- 
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to 
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the 
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are 
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a 
diminishing number of producers.

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#1671

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Jeff Jonas wrote:
>>> Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane was so much
>>> simpler than the airliners of today...
>> 
>> Ah, but that's the logic trap.
>> It LOOKS simple but the design was NOT enduring
>> 
>> 1) turning involved the rudders and "wing warping":
>>    flexing the wings. The wings can't do that forever:
>>    the parts will fatigue.
> 
> Wood doesn't fatigue.
> 
> 
> 
>> 2) although other flying machines use a "canard" design,
>>    the front control surface were moved to the tail,
>>    now known as "elevators"
> Very few flying machines use a canar layout, if for no better reason
> that to balance one generally required the heavy engine at the back.
> This, in a crash in a stick and linen frame usually killed the pilot.
> 
> The advantages of having a big lump in front to crash first, were soon
> noted, as were the deleterious effects of ingesting the large
> quaintities of castor oil.

Actually a canard is a safer type of aircraft, it is much harder to stall 
because the canard is at a more positive incidence that the wing.  It will 
stall first hereby reducing the angle of attack of the primary wing.

The CG and CP are in a more advantages place as well.

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#1672

GangGreene wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> Jeff Jonas wrote:
>>>> Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane was so much
>>>> simpler than the airliners of today...
>>> Ah, but that's the logic trap.
>>> It LOOKS simple but the design was NOT enduring
>>>
>>> 1) turning involved the rudders and "wing warping":
>>>    flexing the wings. The wings can't do that forever:
>>>    the parts will fatigue.
>> Wood doesn't fatigue.
>>
>>
>>
>>> 2) although other flying machines use a "canard" design,
>>>    the front control surface were moved to the tail,
>>>    now known as "elevators"
>> Very few flying machines use a canar layout, if for no better reason
>> that to balance one generally required the heavy engine at the back.
>> This, in a crash in a stick and linen frame usually killed the pilot.
>>
>> The advantages of having a big lump in front to crash first, were soon
>> noted, as were the deleterious effects of ingesting the large
>> quaintities of castor oil.
> 
> Actually a canard is a safer type of aircraft, it is much harder to stall 
> because the canard is at a more positive incidence that the wing. 

safety is more than just the ability to stall without spinning

> It will 
> stall first hereby reducing the angle of attack of the primary wing.
> 
> The CG and CP are in a more advantages place as well.
> 
> 
Not really. All layouts can be made to work.

Aircraft are the way they are largely because its the best overall 
compromise.



> 


-- 
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to 
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the 
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are 
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a 
diminishing number of producers.

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#1677

Ivan Shmakov wrote:

>         Indeed it is.  The original Wright brothers' plane
>         was so much simpler than the airliners of today...

Hello, Ivan!

Hahaha! My Father was an aviation fan, having seen personally some
airfights during World War II. So, I have some knowledge of this
field, too.

Speaking of the evolution of aircrafts, you (and others) may be
interested in knowing that one of the first aircraft in History, the
"Demoiselle" of Alberto Santos-Dumont, is expecting a revival, being
now made Do-It-Yourself from aluminium, instead of bamboo.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoiselle_(avion)

The aluminium "Demoichelle" first flew in August 2009, 3 years ago:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoichelle

http://www.pouchel.com/english/index_eng.php?p=demoichelle_eng.html

It is amazingly similar to the original "Demoiselle", which was, thus,
the predecessor, one century ago, of all present "Ultra-Light
Motorized" ULM aircrafts.

Not only is it simpler, it is also one of the cheapest aircraft that
can be built.

And, now, it has a flying history of one century... How many aircrafts
have been flying, almost unchanged, for the last century? "Each
technology has its advantages and drawbacks." (One of my favorite
sayings.)

(They also flew it with an electric engine.)

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

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#1679

On 2012-08-18, Mr Emmanuel Roche, France <roche182@laposte.net> wrote:
> Ivan Shmakov wrote:

[...]

> http://www.pouchel.com/english/index_eng.php?p=demoichelle_eng.html
>
> It is amazingly similar to the original "Demoiselle", which was, thus,
> the predecessor, one century ago, of all present "Ultra-Light
> Motorized" ULM aircrafts.
>
> Not only is it simpler, it is also one of the cheapest aircraft that
> can be built.
>
> And, now, it has a flying history of one century... How many aircrafts
> have been flying, almost unchanged, for the last century? "Each
> technology has its advantages and drawbacks." (One of my favorite
> sayings.)
>
> (They also flew it with an electric engine.)
>
> Yours Sincerely,
> Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

An early example of Open Source too:

"Santos-Dumont was so enthusiastic about aviation that he made the 
drawings of the Demoiselle available free of charge, thinking that 
aviation would lead to a new prosperous era for mankind." 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos-Dumont_Demoiselle>

-- 
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
--  Whiskers 
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

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#1682

Emmanuel Roche wrote:

> The "Demoiselle" of Alberto Santos-Dumont, is expecting a revival,
> being now made Do-It-Yourself from aluminium, instead of bamboo.

Argh! My English was faulty: I should have written:" is experiencing a
revival", of course!

(Yes, Alberto Santos-Dumont was truly an incredible man. To this day,
there are people who think that he was the first man in History to
take off (In France, we heard about the Wright Brothers much later
than Alberto, who was flying publicly near Paris, in sight of a few
millions people...).)

In addition, we even have a much older air pioneer, 13 years before
the Wright Brothers: Clément Ader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clément_Ader

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

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#1684

On 2012-08-18, Mr Emmanuel Roche, France <roche182@laposte.net> wrote:
> Emmanuel Roche wrote:
>
>> The "Demoiselle" of Alberto Santos-Dumont, is expecting a revival,
>> being now made Do-It-Yourself from aluminium, instead of bamboo.
>
> Argh! My English was faulty: I should have written:" is experiencing a
> revival", of course!
>
> (Yes, Alberto Santos-Dumont was truly an incredible man. To this day,
> there are people who think that he was the first man in History to
> take off (In France, we heard about the Wright Brothers much later
> than Alberto, who was flying publicly near Paris, in sight of a few
> millions people...).)
>
> In addition, we even have a much older air pioneer, 13 years before
> the Wright Brothers: Clément Ader.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clément_Ader
>
> Yours Sincerely,
> Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

Sir George Cayley, Bt., got his coachman airborne in 1853 
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/100795/Sir-George-Cayley-6th-Baronet>

-- 
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
--  Whiskers 
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

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#1673

On 8/16/2012 1:02 AM, Mr Emmanuel Roche, France wrote:
> For the last weeks, I have (with others) been disassembling TREK-80.
>
> Everybody knows that, despite having worked with about 25 Programming
> Languages, BASIC is still my favorite, despite trying to use Dr. Logo,
> which is so much more "High Level".
>
> So, as usual, I wondered: "Is there something better?"
>
> I made a search and found something named "Go", which seems to be used
> internally by Google.
>
> I read the FAQ, and found the following:
>
> "No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that
> time the computing landscape has changed tremendously.
>

[snip]

>
> Argh! "Hello, World!" is now 750 *KILO* bytes?
>
> (For the record, the TREK-80 game that I am disassembling is 8K. And
> it is a little bit more complex than "Hello, World!"...)
>
> This must be progress...
>
> Yours Sincerely,
> Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France
>

You've missed the point.  Nobody would use "Go" to write
"Hello, World!"

The value of "Go" is it's ability to deal with multicore
processors.

Like all tools, Go is designed to solve a specific problem.

It like asking the question "Which is better?  A hammer or a
screw driver?"  I would say that answer depends on whether
you have a nail, a screw, or a raccoon in front of you.

If you want to write an application that requires multiple
cores to get the performance that you require, "Go" might
be a better choice than many other languages.

Beyond that, the 750K number is misleading.   Modern
Operating Systems map common libraries into your program
address space using virtual address trickery.  For example,
the "C" Run Time Library exists just once in real memory
but can be "mapped" and utilized/shared by every program
on the system simultaneously.

I'll bet that running 1000 instances of "Hello, World!"
simultaneously using even these enormously large
shared libraries would require less memory than running
1000 instances of the design that you would advocate.

Again, which is best depends on what you are trying to
accomplish.

Rob.

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#1675

Il 18/08/2012 01:38, Rob Doyle ha scritto:

> Beyond that, the 750K number is misleading.   Modern
> Operating Systems map common libraries into your program
> address space using virtual address trickery.  For example,
> the "C" Run Time Library exists just once in real memory
> but can be "mapped" and utilized/shared by every program
> on the system simultaneously.
>
> I'll bet that running 1000 instances of "Hello, World!"
> simultaneously using even these enormously large
> shared libraries would require less memory than running
> 1000 instances of the design that you would advocate.

actually, running 1000 instances of the same 750K program on a Linux box 
gives you only one code instance and 1000 data instances plus 1000 task 
descriptors.....

(I'm not 100% sure I have written consistently; just awake....)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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#1676

Rob Doyle wrote:

> You've missed the point.  Nobody would use "Go" to write "Hello, World!"
>
> The value of "Go" is it's ability to deal with multicore processors.
>
> Like all tools, Go is designed to solve a specific problem.

Hello, Rob!

Hum...

1) Yes, I know about multicore processors. In fact, it is me who
published everything known about TurboDOS, the multi-processor version
of MP/M-II with Network. That's why I was interested in "Go": I read
its description, wondering if a microcomputer port could be made, like
Ada.

2) Normally, the purpose of a system language is to be able to write
anything. Personally, from its description, I don't see it being
"designed to solve a specific problem". At the contrary, I think that
they tried, once more, to achieve UNCOL.

3) I have been programming for 30 years, now. At the beginning, a new
PL was appearing every 5 years. I can still remember the time when the
big question was: "Is Pascal the next BASIC?"... I am not sure why
there is less and less variety. According to Microsoft, the number one
PL is Visual BASIC, not C (or C++). (Ada is used only by the military,
primarily for programming missiles.)

4) Personally, I think that the main cause is that the user interface
is more and more visual (as Henk mentioned), and "traditional" PLs are
(or don't seem) well suited to this kind of programming. I am keeping
an eye on "Visual programming language", but, so far, it has not
produced a revolution, the way BASIC on Microcomputer made, compared
to COBOL/FORTRAN on Mainframes.

Conclusion: I make no conclusion. Programming is no longer evolving.
Why? I don't know. Monopoly of Windows?

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

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#1689

On 2012-08-18 18:02:07 +1000, Mr Emmanuel Roche, France said:

> 
> 4) Personally, I think that the main cause is that the user interface
> is more and more visual (as Henk mentioned), and "traditional" PLs are
> (or don't seem) well suited to this kind of programming. I am keeping
> an eye on "Visual programming language", but, so far, it has not
> produced a revolution, the way BASIC on Microcomputer made, compared
> to COBOL/FORTRAN on Mainframes.
> 
> Conclusion: I make no conclusion. Programming is no longer evolving.
> Why? I don't know. Monopoly of Windows?

With all due respect. You seem to be know very little about modern 
computer language evolution. It will seem that you are a classic 
embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The last few years has seen an explosion of new computer languages.  
New languages are emerging faster now that at any previous time.  
Currently, functional programming languages and DSLs are where the 
action is.  The current drive is to remove statefulness from software 
to enable cross-core operation. Windows has nought to do with it, in 
fact what Microsoft does has very little effect any more. The key to 
the explosion has been open source collaboration and the availability 
of key technologies like LLVM.

It is time to update your outdated knowledge.

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#1692

>>>>> Zhu Feng <zhufeng@notmail.com> writes:
>>>>> On 2012-08-18 18:02:07 +1000, Mr Emmanuel Roche, France said:

	[Cross-posting to news:comp.lang.misc, just in case.]

[...]

 >> Conclusion: I make no conclusion.  Programming is no longer
 >> evolving.  Why?  I don't know.  Monopoly of Windows?

[...]

 > The last few years has seen an explosion of new computer languages.
 > New languages are emerging faster now that at any previous time.
 > Currently, functional programming languages and DSLs are where the
 > action is.  The current drive is to remove statefulness from software
 > to enable cross-core operation.  Windows has nought to do with it, in
 > fact what Microsoft does has very little effect any more.  The key to
 > the explosion has been open source collaboration

	... Which makes me wonder why, say, SAC [1] is non-free...

 > and the availability of key technologies like LLVM.

	While I tend to agree that LLVM is, like, a revolution in
	compiler design, the other points above seem overstated a bit.

	For instance, functional programming languages have a long and
	glorious history, but they seem to be losing to, say, Python and
	Java these days.

	As for the parallel computing, which is, to my mind, driven
	mostly by scientific data processing demands, even the state of
	the art compilers of today seem to copy much of the concepts in
	the language they implement from APL of 1964.  (Though, again,
	the /way/ they implement them /may/ be innovative.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAC_programming_language

[...]

-- 
FSF associate member #7257	http://sf-day.org/

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