enough said (was: Philosophical musings...)

[Tom Novelli]

Thank you!  I was getting sick of this thread :)

I'm perfectly happy with assembler, forth, lisp, and an algebraic
expression parser for forth & lisp.  Any language that doesn't restrict me
will do; the simpler, the better.

A question to ponder: Does type checking help programmers catch bugs?  Or
does it cause their debugging ability to atrophy, so they have a hard time
catching a bug that slips past the compiler?


On Wed, 15 Sep 1999 shapj@us.ibm.com wrote:

> This conversation is a bit silly.  There are both low-level and
> high-level problems in operating systems.  There are times when a
> single body of code must address both.  One wants neither a low-level
> nor a high-level language, but rather a language that meets the
> requirements.  Relative to *current* languages this means a language
> that has low-level primitives but is highly extensible. LISP is one
> candidate.  OCAML is a much better one (type safety), and lately has
> been running very efficiently.
> 
> Straightjackets are necessary for people who don't think well.  
> Operating systems are complex and require careful thought.  People who
> require straightjackets therefore do not build operating systems well,
> regardless of the presence or absence of straightjackets.
> 
> Jonathan S. Shapiro, Ph. D.
> IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
> Email: shapj@us.ibm.com
> Phone: +1 914 784 7085  (Tieline: 863)
> Fax: +1 914 784 7595

Tom Novelli
Endicott, NY (home of IBM)

P.S. - thanks alot for dumping trichloromethane in our aquifer ;)
Mmmm, tasty..