🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <406@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes:

>Before we get embroiled in a meaningless argument, let me point out that there
>are at least two criteria for success of a programming language:
>  success-1: having lots of neat design ideas, and
>  success-2: being widely adopted.

      text deleted

                                 re-ordered
> I still maintain that this supports my earlier thesis: that committee-
>designed languages fail and individually-designed languages succeed.  Now that
>I have defined success and failure more clearly, more people might agree.

I appreciate your clarification of success, but I think your thesis
remains unsupported.

>
> Here are some more opinions:
>
>Ada	success-1?	failure-2?	small group (Ichbiah & Co.)?

too early to tell, but since commercial shops are chosing it for new
work (not yet in droves though) it may very well be a success-2. I
would have classified Ada as a committee

>Algol-60 success-1	failure-2	small group
>Algol-68 success-1??	failure-2	committee

Using US success as criteria for -2 seems a bit parochial

>C	success-1	success-2	small group

>COBOL	failure-1	success-2	committee

COBOL did much right (as little as I like to admit it), failure-1 is
not totally justified.

>FORTRAN	failure-1	success-2	small group

FORTRAN was tied for first "high level language"...given its early
appearance the original fortran should be classed as success-1. F88,
while imperfect does (in the opnion of some) deserve a success-1.

>FORTH	failure-1	success-2?	small group

failure-2.

>LISP	success-1	failure-2(this is changing)	small group

"changing" not much in the big scheme of things... and its current
form is the product of committee work.

>Modula2	success-1	success-2	small group

Failure-2. Perhaps this will change. Seperate i/o modules for each
datatype and etc. make modula-2 an ugly language for applications ...
whether there is a need for yet another systems programming language
is debatable.

>Pascal	success-1	success-2	small group

success-1 ?? Nearly every single early implementation had to massively
extend it to make it useful. Code portability was nil, and etc.

>PL/I	failure-1	failure-2	large committee
>


The contention that committees have done worse than small groups is
not supported by this simple tabulation. Futhermore if we weight the
"votes" by the lines of code (or programmers fluent, or any other
metric of size) committee designed languages had done much better.


Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus