Language design, was Re: Atomicity block

John (our esteemed comp.compilers moderator) wrote:


> [The last interestingly innovative language was Simula in 1967, but
> that hasn't kept people from inventing new ones. -John]


Not entirely true. I see two new developments that postdate Simula:


1. Various constructs for initiating and controlling parallelism. (Given
Dijstra's talent for the unexpected and that Dijkstra published papers
on the issue as late as 1968, I assume that there were new ideas after
1967 *g*. Unfortunately, the various search machines that I tried were
too busy to check for sure.)


2. Simula had no multiple inheritance. Since Simula was the initial OO
language, I don't think there was another one.


3. There have been lots of advances in the area of combining various
forms of polymorphism and static typing.


4. There is a lot of innovation in the area of *integrating* paradigms.
As an example, take a look at:


Peter van Roy, Seif Haridi: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of
Computer Programming


A draft is available on http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/book.html
(it will go away shortly).


Well, at least that's what would be interestingly innovative for *me* -
YMMV :-)


Regards,
Jo
--
Currently looking for a new job.

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