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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 3/19/2022 12:26 PM, abrsvc wrote:
> On Saturday, March 19, 2022 at 11:21:35 AM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> 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 <ar... 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.
> 
> I have used some of the mentioned languages for some projects with
> success.  I suppose that the point I am making too is that the
> correct languages should also fit the problem.

It is always good to pick the right language for the problem.

>                                                Using JAVA for
> example to solve numerical problems makes no sense.  FORTRAN is ideal
> for such things. (I know, Simon will say that C is too...).

Fortran is good at the numerical stuff. And newer language versions
are also way more modern than traditional 66 or 77.

There are some numerical work done in Java and there are numerical
libraries available. But it is definitely third tier in that domain.
I would prefer Kotlin over Java if I had to do numerical stuff in JVM.

>                                                              Just
> because a language is new and is all the rage, does not mean that it
> is the right choice.
Most new languages are fine for what they are intended for.

But the above 4 are not exactly new: JavaScript - 1995, Python - 1991,
PHP - 1995, R - 1993.

Arne