[Info-vax] [OT] Wirth style languages, was: Re: Obscure Ada compiler vendors?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-04-03 17:24:19 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> Are any of the Wirth style languages considered trendy these days ?
> 
> We have already talked about Ada's current position.

Programming language (alleged) popularity: 
<http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html>

> Personally, I think it would be great if more people were exposed to
> Wirth style languages instead of just been exposed to C style languages.

The "smaller" language family tree <http://www.levenez.com/lang/>, with 
links from there to a larger listing of languages.

Classic Pascal was popular in introductory computing classes at schools 
and colleges ~thirty years ago.  Now, not so much.

More recently, MIT has been offering Python 
<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/index.htm> 
<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/> 
and Java 
<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/civil-and-environmental-engineering/1-00-introduction-to-computers-and-engineering-problem-solving-spring-2012/> 
for introductory classes.

If you're working on a large application or an operating system, you're 
going to be looking at immediate and long-term staff availability and 
retention and staffing costs, at the trend and the likelihood the 
language will be common in ten years or whatever horizon you've 
established, and at whether the language is reasonably suited for the 
task.  For system programming work, C or subset C++ is still a very 
common choice.

As you add languages to a large project, you add costs.  VMS had C, 
Macro32 (VAX assembler, compiled on Alpha and Itanium) and Bliss in 
roughly thirds of the source code pool, with various other languages 
including Ada used in various spots.  You usually have to grow your own 
Bliss and assembler programmers, where you can usually hire folks with 
some experience programming in C or C++.

-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC