[Info-vax] Programming languages, was: Re: VMS documentation

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 3/17/2022 7:57 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 3/16/2022 8:55 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-03-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 3/16/2022 8:09 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>> On 3/16/2022 7:53 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>> I think it would have been difficult to find a language easier to 
>>>>> learn
>>>>> than Pascal.
>>>>
>>>> Basic on the various DEC systems.
>>>
>>> Wirth, Dijkstra etc. did not like Basic.
>>>
>>> But yes - Basic is also an easy language to learn.
>>
>> Easy to learn but it doesn't mean you are teaching students the right
>> things for when they need to start writing production code. :-)
> 
> Teaching something that is easy to learn and teaching something
> that is "right" to learn are two different goals.

And both has changed since Wirth's and Dijkstra's time.

New languages that are easy to learn has been introduced.

And the classic strong static typed structured procedural approach as
the right one has been supplemented by many other approaches.

One reason being that few today believe in same approach to
all types of production code.

I don't think the two gentlemen would like JavaScript, Python,
PHP, R etc. but the fact is that those languages thrive today.

Maybe not in code that controls an airplane with 300 passengers,
but there are plenty of other areas.

Arne