🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <650011@hpclscu.HP.COM> shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:
<some suggestions for Herman Rubin>

I have this theory that people who actually use computers to do useful things
can tell language designers, compiler writers, and system architects a great
deal about what they actually need.  If we listen to them, we may advance the
state of the art.  Herman has been quite clear in telling us some of what he
wants/needs.  He has not spared our egos in the process.  We may not always
agree with what he says, but can we not find inspiration in his ideas?

When an intelligent person tells me that HLLs are inadequate for what s/he
is trying to do, I suspect that it's time to investigate, not time to flame.

Of course, Herman's suggestion that
>> the ability to do intelligent coding using the machine capabilities may
>> be destroyed by learning such restrictive coding procedures first
seems fairly risible, but who knows: I seem to recall a fairly respectable
computer scientist* saying something similar about coding in BASIC and its
effect on coding in modern HLLs, and compiler writers didn't dump on him. :-)

*(This is certainly not meant to imply that Herman is not a respectable
computer scientist; skill with statistics, which his net address leads me
to ascribe to him, does not preclude knowledge of other disciplines.)