Unix and user friendy systems (vs. ADA)

[Ken Montgomery]

>From: munck at mitre-bedford.ARPA
>
>  Aha, at last a clear statement of what drives me crazy about C and
>UNIX.
>
>> The man pages are meant as short summaries for human beings ...
>> The source code is written for dumb computers to interpret.
>
>If you read that without a twinge, you're part of the problem.  Source
>code SHOULD BE written for human beings, who are its most frequent and
>expensive readers,

Code should also be written to perform well.  CPU cycles are not
infinite and not free.

> and secondarily for a very specialized, very
>infrequently-used (in comparison to the total amount of computing done)
>program called a compiler.

I would bet that the assertion that compilers are infrequently used
is false on machines are used for instructional computing and/or
program development.

>  Certainly in UNIX, where programs are meant
>to be read, understood, and changed by many people, the former
>consideration should weigh much more heavily than the latter.  Yet they
>use C, which has to be mentally translated by the most guru-ie of wizards.  

Translated into what?

>
>   In my opinion, the language that best supports writing of superbly
>human-readable programs at no significant expense in machine efficiency
>is Ada.

Right.  Like the ADA program I saw on the net recently which appeared
to have two variables called 'x' defined in one procedure (one was an
integer and one was floating point).  This did not strike me as being
a "superbly human-readable program".

Does anyone even have a full compiler that produces real code (not
interpretive mish-mash), much less one that produces efficient code?

> I doubt that anyone will challenge that...

Did you forget a :-) ?

>               -- Bob Munck, MITRE

--
The above viewpoints are mine.  They are unrelated to
those of anyone else, including my cats and my employer.

Ken Montgomery  "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
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