Book Reviews
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Tuesday, August 17, 2004
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} -- Comment()
Alibis and the Kindness of Strangers: 'On the Internet, you can find so-called "alibi and excuse clubs." They're simple. As a member of the club -- membership can mean nothing more than signing up for the mailing list -- you can ask other members to help you with alibis. Maybe you want someone to pretend to be your doctor and call your boss.'
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Programming languages: practicality vs. design -- Comment()
Ssp commented selecting a programming language: "I used to like Pascal a lot as well. It's so friendly. Haven't used it in years though. It's interesting to see Mathematica and Maple side by side in your list. While I haven't done significant programming in those, I've always found Mathematica nice and loathed Maple. Unfortunately I never needed something like Prolog or Smalltalk. What I saw about them looked interesting. BTW, is there any overview of programming language concepts? Do people actually have concepts before making up a programming language? Or does it just 'happen'?" I think the answer is "both". Fortran was designed starting in 1954, but the language has evolved undeterministically since then. If Fortran was designed today, the language would be much simpler. There were a lot of dead ends in the original language. In contrast, some languages are definetely designed. I understand that for example Haskell is thought to be a really elegant desing. On the other hand, many of these beautiful languages are little used. So, to be a success a language has to have a need ("to happen") and a design ("to grow"). Of the new languages Python seems to be a nice compromise between practicality and design. But also Python can run into a dead end, perhaps.
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