Re: choosing a teaching language, was Java compiler courses

Chris Smith wrote:


> Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> wrote:


>>[...] whereas Pascal is well suited for such
>>an task, without a need for using any additional library.


>>The same for C++ or Java, these also are useless without additional
>>libraries, [...]


> Huh? I'm trying to figure out where you're coming from here.


I believe this is the old explicit vs. implicit library call question.
Languages like Fortran use statements such as READ and WRITE for I/O,
which compile into library calls. C and Java explicitly call I/O
functions/methods. There are advantages and disadvantages of each,
but in most cases the differences aren't that big.


You can extend it to operators vs. function calls, too. Fortran has
the MOD function, C has the % operator. PL/I has the SUBSTR function,
Fortran uses substring notation (start:end), though it isn't an
operator. (It can't be applied to string expressions, only to
CHARACTER variables.) C has bitwise logical operators, Fortran has
bitwise logical functions.


-- glen

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