Re: Safety and power in languages

bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
4 Feb 1996 00:59:11 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java,comp.compilers,comp.lang.ada
Date: 4 Feb 1996 00:59:11 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
References: 96-01-037 96-01-116 96-01-130 96-02-026
Keywords: design

Steve Witham <truesoft!sw@uunet.uu.net> wrote:
>Security and safety in computers are a kind of negative power: by
>allowing less, you know more about what a program will do, without
>having to know or think as much about the program.


Well, *sometimes* that's true, but in general, I disagree.


For example, Lisp feels a *lot* more flexible to me that C, despite
the fact that there are things I can't do in Lisp -- fiddling with
memory addresses at a low level. Because I'm restricted in that way,
I can freely pass pointers around in Lisp (well, *everything's* a
pointer), without worrying about dangling pointers and storage leaks.
IMHO, the "restriction" gives *more* freedom, not less.


Similarly, OOP features make a language more flexible, but you can't
have OOP without some sort of type system (you have to at least
require the programmer to say what sort of object is being created).


- Bob
--


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