Re: A database theory resource - ideas

"JOG" <jog_at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote in message news:1174389056.457502.87040_at_e1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> 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!

or "afterguard"? (I just happen to be re-reading O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels at the moment ... :-) )

>
>>
>> > 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 - 16:39:32 CET