🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TMB.92Nov13005803@arolla.idiap.ch> tmb@arolla.idiap.ch (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:
   Much as I dislike C, I disagree. FORTH doesn't even come close in
   either efficiency or usability (imagine: syntax even worse than that
   of C).

What is this opinion based upon, a simple threaded interpreted FORTH?
If you have the money you can buy FORTH compilers generating native
code.  BTW I'm disspointed at the syntax jibe, there is a perfectly
good reason for FORTH to have the syntax that it does, which is more
than can be said for most languages.


   Oberon and Algol-68 (Turing as far as I know as well) are
   higher-level, with associated runtime costs and difficulties for
   low-level access/interfacing.

The alleged runtime costs of Oberon and Turing didn't seem to deter
their use as the implementation language for operating systems
(Lillith is a mixture of Oberon and Modula-2; a BSD compatible OS
has been written in Turing).


   I don't know about RCC or "el(alpha)".

el(alpha) - systems programming language.  Attempts to be what C used
to be i.e. a high level language that knows about real hardware
addresses and in/out ports ... etc.  

Essential Language el(alpha) - A Reduced Expression Set Language for
Systems programming
Tan Watanabe, Hideyuki Arai and Hohbun Umetani
SIGPLAN Notices 26(1):85-98

ALEC - A Language with an Extensible Compiler
Implemented using RCC (a system developed by the first author below)
on an ICL 1906A

ALEC - A User Extensible Scientific Programming Language
R. B. E. Napper, R. N. Fisher
The Computer Journal 19(1):25-31


   Turbo Pascal is a CPM/MSDOS specialty language--it's not difficult
   to be a "portable systems programming language" for a single
   machine.

You mean much as C was to begin with?  Are you claiming that it is
impossible to port Turbo Pascal to other environments?  The fact that
it hasn't been done is irrelevant, there is probably little incentive
given the tiny workstation market compared to the PC market.


   The only language that I would imagine might be a serious alternative
   to C among those that you have listed is Modula-2, but I'm not
   sufficiently familiar with its low-level features to say whether it
   could cover the same breadth of system-programming problems that C
   covers.

Name the problems and we can find out.

bevan