Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support

On Sun, 8 Apr 2018 14:21:48 +0100, "Derek M. Jones"
<derek@_NOSPAM_knosof.co.uk> wrote:




> Martin Ward wrote:
>> Modern popular languages are neither powerful nor easy to learn.
>
>What evidence do you have for this?


I disagree about "easy to learn" - there are plenty of languages that
are easy to learn. But as to the question of "power" ...


Note that "powerful" and "useful" (for some definition) are not the
same thing. There are plenty of semantically restricted languages
that can be considered useful for their intended purposes.


That said:




IMO, the evidence that many popular languages are not "powerful" is
that they are either exclusively or primarily OO, but they implement
only single inheritance objects.


Wherever you stand on OO as a programming paradigm, you can't deny
that single inheritance is the weakest variant of it. The addition of
"interfaces" and "mix-ins" does not make up for the lack of true
multiple inheritence in those situations where it is needed.


The necessity to write "Design Patterns" was, IMO, acknowledgement
that the average programmer could not figure out how to express their
ideas under Java's limited object model.






I prefer to use languages that naturally support multiple programming
paradigms, and don't put many (or any) limits on what can be done
using them. Some solutions are best expressed procedurally, others
are more naturally functional, and yet others are best modeled using
objects.


I relegate to the proverbial junk heap the many languages that force
solutions to be shoehorned into a model that they don't naturally fit.
There are too many "me too" languages that think a simple object model
combined with procedural code is the solution to every problem.




YMMV,
George

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