Re: Choosing a PL - What you can do or how you do it?

evan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx skrev:
[...]
On the one
hand, it is all well and good to sing the praises of languages like
Haskell, and it's FP brethren, but on the other hand - why do
necessary languages like C/C++ get such a bad rap, when it is pretty
clear we can't actually live without them?

Well, in fact there are saner alternatives to C and C++. Oberon, for
instance, is a completely type safe procedural language with OOP support.

http://www.zel.org/oberon/fromctoo.htm
http://www.modulaware.com/mdltws.htm
http://www.modulaware.com/mdlt49.htm

Now, if Haskell could do
all the things that C can do - including meeting performance
requirements - then I would be fully converted. Right now, I'm still
sort of on the fence - and quite a bit skeptical. Thoughts, anyone?

To cite Niklaus Wirth regarding functional languages:

"To postulate a state-less model of computation on top of a machinery
whose most eminent characteristic is state, seems to be an odd idea, to
say the least. The gap between model and machinery is wide, and
therefore costly to bridge. No hardware support feature can wash this
fact aside: It remains a bad idea for practice. This has in due time
also been recognized by the protagonists of functional languages. They
have introduced state (and variables) in various tricky ways. The purely
functional character has thereby been compromised and sacrificed. The
old terminology has become deceiving."

http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.pdf


August


.

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