| Title: | Languages |
| Notice: | Speaking In Tongues |
| Moderator: | TLE::TOKLAS::FELDMAN |
| Created: | Sat Jan 25 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Wed May 21 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 394 |
| Total number of notes: | 2683 |
This showed up in the latest SigPlan Notices. I think it is of
interest to this audience. Make suggestions for other languages
as replies to this note.
Selecting a Programming Language Made Easy
Daniel Salomon & David Rosenblueth
Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
With such a large selection of programming languages it can be
difficult to choose one for a particular project. Reading manuals
to evaluate the languages is a time consuming process. On the other
hand, most people already have a fairly good idea of how various
automobiles compare. So in order to assist those trying to choose
a language, we have prepared a chart that matches programming languages
with comparable automobiles.
Assembler A Formula I race car. Very fast, but difficult to drive
and expensive to maintain.
FORTRAN II A model T Ford. Once it was king of the road.
FORTRAN IV A Model A Ford.
FORTRAN 77 A six-cylinder Ford Fairlane with standard transmission
and no seat belts.
COBOL A delivery van. It's bulky and ugly, but it does the
work.
BASIC A second-hand Rambler with a rebuilt engine and patched
upholstery. Your dad bought it for you to learn to drive.
You'll ditch the car as soon as you can afford a new one.
PL/I A Cadillac convertible with automatic transmission,
a two-tone paint job, white-wall tires, chrome exhaust
pipes, and fuzzy dice hanginn inthe windshield.
C A black Firebird, the all-macho car. Comes with optional
seat belts (lint) and an optional fuzz buster (escape to
assembler).
ALGOL 60 An Austin Mini. Boy, that's a small car!
Pascal A Volkswagen Beetle. It's small but sturdy. Was once
popular with intellectuals.
Modula II A Volkswagen Rabbit with a trailer hitch.
ALGOL 68 An Aston Martin. An impressive car, but not just anyone
can drive it.
LISP An electric car. It's simple but slow. Seat belts
are not available.
PROLOG/LUCID
Prototype concept-cars.
Maple/MACSYMA
All terrain vehicles.
FORTH A go-cart.
LOGO A kiddie's replica of a Rolls Royce. Comes with a real
engine and a working horn.
APL A double-decker bus. It takes rows and columns of
passengers to the same place all at the same time. But, it
drives only in reverse gear, and is instrumented in Greek.
Ada An army-green Mercedes-Benz staff car. Power steering,
power brakes and automatic transmission are all standard.
No other colors or options are available. If it's good
enough for the generals, it's good enough for you.
Manufacturing delays due to difficulties in reading the
design specifications are starting to clear up.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 104.1 | Correction & Addition | MINAR::BISHOP | Fri Sep 19 1986 16:59 | 13 | |
C is wrong--it should be:
An old sixties sedan with a big V-8 which has been worked on
by a bunch of high-school students. It has an airscoop (made out
of plywood), jacked-up rear end, and three different colors of
primer.
BLISS is a Mustang from the sixties which has been converted for
stock racing: the back seat is gone, the engine rebored, the clutch
is gone (real programmers can speed-shift). But the paint job is
a slick metallic blue.
-John Bishop
| |||||
| 104.2 | LOGIC::VANTREECK | Fri Sep 19 1986 17:36 | 37 | ||
I don't have an author on my photocopy of this:
FORTRAN: The great progenitor. A real step forward in its day,
but it has had a tendency to hold back progress ever since.
COBOL: Is prolix. Reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln once said
about a fellow lawyer: "He can compress the most words
into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met."
BASIC: You can love it or you can hate it, but you can't ingnore
it. BASIC is characterized by the best acronym of the
lot: "Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code."
PL/I Is to computer languages what Texas is to the states:
smaller than Alaska but bigger than everything else.
LISP Can be most clearly described in LISP. ((Parenthetically,
LISP is considerably easier to use than many people
think.) LISP can be thought of as a "high-level machine
language" in which other languages can be written, an
attribute that has proved important in research.
C Simple, clean, terse.
Pascal Pascal is for classroom use. It is precise and
mathematical. A Swiss professor thought it up. He should
have taken a sabatical.
Ada The future, formally certified by the Department of
Defense. Ada is the government's attempt to negotiate
a computer language nonproliferation treaty with itself.
But, sources say, the parties are still far apart.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-George
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| 104.3 | SHEILA::PUCKETT | Open the pod bay doors please HAL | Mon Sep 22 1986 03:56 | 5 | |
RE: .1 You malign the VW Beetle by comparing it with Pascal! ;-) - Giles | |||||
| 104.4 | FORTH's not just a go-kart! | COGITO::STODDARD | Pete Stoddard -- Interdum Vincit Draco | Mon Sep 22 1986 15:51 | 9 |
FORTH is a kit-car. It can be anything from a VW with a new body
to an exact replica of a '67 LOLA Grand Am car. It is whatever
you build it to be! (to quote "Thinking FORTH" by Brodie --
"FORTH is a terrible application language, but a great
llanguage for developing application languages."
Have a GREAT day!
Pete
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| 104.5 | SMOP::GLOSSOP | Kent Glossop | Mon Sep 22 1986 21:19 | 9 | |
RE: .4
Sorry, I can't resist... Anything that has a very small set of control
and data manipulations can be what "you built it to be" to some degree.
I'm reminded of the quotation along the lines "Don't let them tell you
less is more, less is less." The comment was in relation to C, but it
applies just as well to FORTH. (I don't remember the originator.)
Kent
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