🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <36848@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>, bmr@retiree.cis.ufl.edu (Benedict Rafanello) writes:

> Modula-2 isn't dead yet, and looks to be doing well in Europe.  Maybe this
> country will wake up and the "C" craze the will pass. :)
 
In article <1992Aug28.125029.26916@texhrc.uucp>, ak45ldp@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:

> Don't count on it, Ben.  For some reason, most Americans have a dislike for "good"
> programming languages.  If only Wirth had been an American...

It's tempting to compare this with the Fortran vs. Algol situation in the
early 1970s.  At that time Algol-60 was very popular in Europe, and
Fortran was very popular in the U.S.  Because of the strong dominance
of the U.S.A. in the computer field, and in particular because of the
influence of IBM, the Europeans didn't have much leverage, and Algol-60
became very much a minority language.

The new factors now are that the U.S. no longer has quite the influence
which it used to have, that compilers are no longer big-budget items,
and that individual computer users now have greater freedom to choose
their languages, rather than being confined to the one or two
languages decently supported on the central computer.

One of the many reasons for the popularity of C is that C is not Ada.
This matters a lot in the U.S., I suspect, because of the DoD pressure,
but it is less of a factor in the rest of the world.

Now, none of these factors necessarily means that Modula-2 will
become a winner; but nor do they mean that it will become a loser.
American preferences are no longer a dominating factor.

I'd be curious to know what is popular in the countries with
expanding economies - parts of south-east Asia, for example.
-- 
Peter Moylan                      eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au