Re: A database theory resource - ideas

On 20 Mar, 03:34, "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2:17 am, "Tony D" <tonyisyour..._at_netscape.net> wrote:
>
> > On Mar 18, 1:53 am, "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > (Another one down the Google Groups memory hole. sigh...)
>
> > > Oh, pooh. The problem isn't Kernighan, nor Ritchie, nor C itself.
> > > There are perfectly good uses for a low-level programming
> > > language. The problem is the legions who came afterwards
> > > who didn't recognize C for what it was, and instead turned
> > > it in to the One True Way.
>
> > No, it's worse than that. Aside from C being a macro assembler
> > pretending to be a high level language,
>
> Ah! But C does not pretend to be high-level, nor were K&R claiming
> it was. In fact, the very book under discussion says "C is a
> low-level programming language ..." Again, I blame the legions
> coming afterwards. (What's the opposite of "vanguard?")

rear-guard!

>
> > the exposition of it in book
> > form, "The C Programming Language", is a woeful attempt at describing
> > it. It has no redeeming features - it isn't short (compared to the
> > Algol-60 Report or the Pascal Report, which also do a better job
> > describing the respective languages), and it is insufficiently formal
> > (apocryphally, you could write 4 compilers which all agreed with some
> > interpretation of the text but which all produced different results
> > with the same source code - since they all "agreed" with the text,
> > they were all "correct"). Both of these are fatal flaws in any kind of
> > specification, and fatal to the max in a language spec. Sadly, others
> > have been influenced by both the language and the style of exposition.
>
> It would be culturally insensitive* to judge the book and the language
> by current standards. You fault them for the lack of formality, but
> when did formal methods for describing programming languages
> really get started? Scott and Strachey first began working together
> in 1972, the same year "The C Programming Laguage" was
> published. So we can't fault K&R for not using denotational
> semantics, can we? What *was* the first language with a
> formal semantics? Offhand I'd guess ML, which was when?
> ... It seems "The Definition of Standard ML" came in 1990,
> fully 18 years after TCPL.
>
> * or something
>
> > > Cardelli? Hello? How have we come this far and no one has
> > > mentioned Cardelli?
>
> > Well, Luca Cardelli deserves a gong for his "Fundamental Theory of
> > Management", I suppose ;)
>
> > What about Robin Milner (and the rest of the LCF team) ? Or Dana Scott
> > & Christopher Strachey (or even Joe Stoy) ? Or Peter Landin ? Or
> > Robert Kowalski, or the joy of Clocksin & Mellish ;)
>
> Good grief, how did I leave out Milner?
>
> > > Peyton-Jones is uber-interesting. Wadler mostly just confuses me
> > > these days; is he playing an elaborate joke on us or what?
>
> > I did ponder that in Wadler's days at Avaya when he was doing the XML
> > thang ...
>
> Heh.
>
> Marshall
Received on Tue Mar 20 2007 - 12:10:56 CET