🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Nov30.163613.9562@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>, mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:
> 
>      While I'm at it, I sincerely hope that some cleaner language like
> Turing wipes C off the face of this planet.  I've about had it with all
> this "my language is better than yours" garbage from the C folk and can
> wish nothing for them other than extinction.
> 
> 				Marc R. Roussel
>                                 mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca

 I inadvertently touched off one of these FORTRAN-vs-C wars about 2 years ago
so let me apologize now for that one.  I have learned a bit since then, so I
offer my current perspective:

 (1) C is a lousy language for numerical work.
 (2) FORTRAN is a lousy language for anything BUT numerical work.
 (3) Both C and FORTRAN are lousy in that they facilitate writting highly
     bebugged code.

 I think that the main reason for such acrimonious debate is that neither side
is qualified to express meaningful opinions, because both sides are lacking
essential experience.  In particular:

 (1) FORTRAN programmers mostly do not know how to do "data structure"
     programming and recursion, so they do not know what they are missing;
 (2) C programmers mostly work on micros, workstations, or minicomputers,
     so they are not acquainted with pipelining, vectorizing, parallel
     processing, etc., so they do not know what they are missing by using C.

So what is one to do?

I see at least two solutions:

 (1) Stop doing numerical work [ :-) ]
 (2) Find or develop a language suitable for this sort of work.

 Perhaps most practicioners would prefer solution (2) ???
I like your suggestion of Turing.  Have you looked at Eiffel?  I am also 
investigating Occam.  Any opinions on this?
-- 
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