On Thursday 27 July 2006 05:42 pm, Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > boblq wrote:
quoting from Donald Knuth == I below: > > Moreover, if I did use a high-level language, what language should it be? > > In the 1960s I would probably have chosen Algol W; in the 1970s, I would > > then have had to rewrite my books using Pascal; in the 1980s, I would > > surely have changed everything to C; in the 1990s, I would have had to > > switch to C++ and then probably to Java. In the 2000s, yet another > > language will no doubt be de rigueur. I cannot afford the time to rewrite > > my books as languages go in and out of fashion; languages aren't the > > point of my books, the point is rather what you can do in your favorite > > language. My books focus on timeless truths. > > I find this to be a red herring. I also note that he conveniently > forgets about Fortran. If his programs are really that small, then > Fortran is more than high enough level. C also easily spans 1980's to > now with practically no change. He has rearranged his assembly language > from his original one in the 1960's, so that time frame certainly was > unstable anyhow. Scheme/Lisp was also stable over that same time frame. Fortran is a pretty ugly language for the expression of algorithms of the sort (pun) that Knuth discusses. I find the lack of pointers makes the resulting code damn near incomprehensible. I have a very complex system implemented in Fortran right now that is _very_ hard to understand because of this. C OTOH works fine. I would be quite happy with C. Forth, more a concept or style than a language really, was for years my favorite. Now Forth informs my C style. I can go with C++ = C with Classes, but not much further. The syntax of printing with >> (or is it <<) gives me headaches. And while I like the idea of canned off the shelf data structures and algorithms ala the Standard Template Library (STL) the syntax, I find the actual expression of these things in C++ is completely offputting. YMMV, BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
