From: James Lee
Subject: Re: Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper
Date:
Message-ID: <5i87d2$drr@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>
] 2. Many people objected to the fact that their favorite programming
] was left out of the white paper. Yes, I have heard of Scheme,
] Smalltalk, ML, etc. I left these languages out because they
] didn't seem particularly relevant for the discussion. No offense
] intended...
Why were they irrelevant? Your paper concentrates on system and
scripting languages exclusively while ignoring an entire genre of
languages that may offer the features you're looking for in both.
] - It is possible to make languages with execution speeds like C or C++,
] that use dynamic typing successfully, whilst being high-level enough
] in the creation of abstractions to "glue" things together quite
] nicely and easily.
]
] Can you point to a specific language and identify a large community of
] users who agree with this assessment? Many people have made claims like
] this to me, but no one has been able to point to a good real-world
] example. The white paper argues that you can't have a jack-of-all-trades
] language. Either you have a strongly typed language, which gives high
] speed and manageability but makes gluing hard, or you have a weakly
] typed language with the opposite properties.
Gambit-C is an exceptionally effecient Scheme -> C optimising compiler.
I believe the author, Marc Freeley, also has a Tk interface in the works.
] His arguments on "typeless" languages is useless.
] You don't need a "scripting language" to
] get usable abstractions without the need
] to deal with low-level issues.
]
] button .b -text Hello! -font {Times 16} -command {puts hello}
]
] In Macintosh Common Lisp I'll write this as:
]
] (make-instance 'button-dialog-item
] :dialog-item-text "Hello"
] :view-font '("Times" 16)
] :dialog-item-action (lambda (item) (print "hello")))
]
] I think this example supports my claim that scripting languages are a
] lot easier to use when you need to mix and match lots of things of
] different types. The MCL example is a lot more verbose and complicated
] than the Tcl example.
I disagree entirely and would like to know what grounds you base your
reaction on. The MCL example is certainly no more "complicated" and
the verbosity of the classes and accessors is a symptom common to Lisp
programmers but not enforced by the language itself. This usually aids
in readability (and hence reusability) although the example given above
doesn't illustrate this aspect very well.
James Lee -- <····@math.purdue.edu>
James Lee <····@math.purdue.edu> writes:
> ] 2. Many people objected to the fact that their favorite programming
> ] was left out of the white paper. Yes, I have heard of Scheme,
> ] Smalltalk, ML, etc. I left these languages out because they
> ] didn't seem particularly relevant for the discussion. No offense
> ] intended...
>
> Why were they irrelevant? Your paper concentrates on system and
> scripting languages exclusively while ignoring an entire genre of
> languages that may offer the features you're looking for in both.
I agree! At least ML and Scheme (i dont know smalltalk very well ..) are
particulary relevant to this discussion. They at least are intended to
solve all the mentioned problems (terser code means shorter development
time and less errors, inheritance is not so important, the computer
should look for types etc.).
The last posting of J. Ousterhout is outing him as candidate for getting
an ML-fan!
From: Carl Zmola
Subject: Re: Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper
Date:
Message-ID: <33495a61.19863462@192.168.2.19>
On 06 Apr 1997 18:35:10 +0200, Fritz Heinrichmeyer
<···················@fernuni-hagen.de> wrote:
>James Lee <····@math.purdue.edu> writes:
>
>> ] 2. Many people objected to the fact that their favorite programming
>> ] was left out of the white paper. Yes, I have heard of Scheme,
>> ] Smalltalk, ML, etc. I left these languages out because they
>> ] didn't seem particularly relevant for the discussion. No offense
>> ] intended...
>>
>> Why were they irrelevant? Your paper concentrates on system and
>> scripting languages exclusively while ignoring an entire genre of
>> languages that may offer the features you're looking for in both.
>
>I agree! At least ML and Scheme (i dont know smalltalk very well ..) are
>particulary relevant to this discussion. They at least are intended to
>solve all the mentioned problems (terser code means shorter development
>time and less errors, inheritance is not so important, the computer
>should look for types etc.).
>
>The last posting of J. Ousterhout is outing him as candidate for getting
>an ML-fan!
>
This is clearly an Eastcoast-Leftcoast argument. Although it seems
that the leftcoast is pushing for conformity. :-)
Carl