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Mail List wrote:
Hi Hans,

That is an interesting definition.  I would assume from this that Assembler
or its ilk are not programming languages, right?  Because while they are "a
set of characters with rules for combining them", it's been my experience
that they do require knowledge of machine code,  they're not exactly
portable, and they're generally one-to-one as far as opcode to machine
instruction, although macro capabilities could be construed as "instruction
explosion".  So if they're not programming languages, what are they?

While certainly you can do "programming" using "assembly languages" (just like you can do programming by coding a series of hex numbers), I think Sammet's point is that they are somehow different than the things we normally call "programming languages". Her definition is used to group together "programming languages" for the purpose of study, and clearly assembly languages aren't as interesting from an academic point of view. For example, can you come up with a context-free grammar for an assembly language? Sure, it's a fine point, but on balance, I would tend to agree with her definition and keep assembly languages in a different category.


Now, where MI fits with respect to Sammet's definition, that's another issue. I'll leave that debate to others! ;-)

Cheers! Hans



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