🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.024021.8724@linus.mitre.org> crawford@boole.mitre.org (Randy Crawford) writes:
   I defy the critics in this forum to devise a programming language which has 
   the ability to outperform C given the constraints I have listed above.

Why devise, there are _thousands_ of languages already.  Off the top
of my head, the following would all give C a run for its money, but
verifying it might me quite a difficult task:- el(alpha), FORTH,
Turing, various Algol 68 subsets, RCC, Modula II, Oberon(-2) and Turbo
Pascal.  I'm sure a perusal of the regularly posted language list
would produce others (e.g. SIMULA and Y, but I can't comment on code
quality of available compilers).  Anyway what is the point of the
comparision?  There is little point in fighting a battle with a
language that has 23 years head start, no matter how bad the original
language is, just look at FORTRAN (with plenty of hindsight of
course).


   Ever build a compiler to run in 20K of RAM and produce executables
   which must run in an equally tiny space?  What language would you
   prefer, Ada, PL/1 or perhaps Pascal?  Good luck.

Unless you are incredibly unfortunate, these days you'd use a cross
compiler so the size of the compiler is immaterial.  That said, I'd
probably go with Ada (don't knock it unless you've tried it).  If I
really had to do the development in 20K, I'd choose FORTH every time
there is no competition (IMHO of course :-).


   If you hope to design a language as powerful and flexible as C with
   a compiler as small, portable and simple, you will have to consider
   as Dennis Ritchie did what it is you cannot live without in a
   programming language.  I suspect that even with 23 years of
   hindsight that he did not have, your end product will look a lot
   like K&R C.

With hindsight, I'd either have gone with SIMULA or (given that the
compiler was relatively expensive), implemented an Algol 68 subset.


   Remember too, that when C was born in 1969, most programmers were
   still fighting with 300 baud modems, paper tape, and columnar punch
   cards.  A terse powerful programming language like C, with
   user-defined types, dynamic memory and free-form syntax was a huge
   step forward.

Even over Algol 68 and SIMULA-67?


   In a lot of ways, more modern languages are still trying to catch
   up.  It was 1992 before Ada 9X offered us pointers to functions.
   But two decades ago they were available in C.

I don't think any language is seriously trying to catch up with C with
regard technical issues, the languages that hade them before C
certainly, but not from C.  I think the quote regarding Algol 68 comes
to mind here ...

bevan