Re: programming language genealogy

["Michael Naughton" <mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Playing devil's advocate for a moment here:

Hans wrote: 
>Based on her studes of 
>programming languages, she has come up with a useful definition of 
>what a programming language is. Whether or not you or anyone else 
>accept that definition is irrelevant for the purposes of that 
>definition.

So, this definition is "useful" even if nobody else accepts it?

>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.

Okay, so it's "useful" to group together a set of things that someone
wants to call "programming languages", even though it doesn't include all
the things that the rest of us might think of when someone says
"programming languages", because they aren't "interesting". Isn't that a
little like my defining "cars" as things having (among other
characteristics) manual transmissions. And when someone says, "Wait a
minute -- how about cars with automatic transmissions?", I just say,
"Well, they're not interesting." ?
>

>But only if your program was only ever intended to be run on one 
>particular platform. These days, fewer and fewer shops run 
>homogenous system environments.

Well, yeah. . . . So I guess this definition isn't just for "interesting"
programming languages, it's for "interesting" programming languages that
are likely to be more popular in today's environment.
>

>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". 

Well, I'm not exactly sure who "we" is here. I would "normally" call
assembler a "programming language" before I would call it anything else .
. . .

With all due respect, this seems very much like another case of a word
meaning "exactly what I choose it to mean, neither more nore less". . . .

Seriously, are there actual "useful" and/or "interesting" (there go those
words again! :-) results from having pursued the implications of this
definition?
>



Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx