Not having the tools... (was Re: LEX and YACC, jeff & mutt

In article <1989Nov4.000444.5512@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> henry@zoo.toronto.edu writes:
>Actually, our moderator's remarks about lex bring a third reason to
>mind: if the support tools on the developer's home system are buggy
>enough, it may not be cost-effective to use them, even if it would be
>a reasonable thing to do in an ideal world.


A perfect example of the above is the compiler class I'm currently taking.
We're working on a subset of Ada (blech when you say that:-), which is fine
because it's a good generic language if you ignore the goofy-Ada-stuff. :-)
The problem is, however, that we're using Pascal under VMS in combination
with the Pargen package (from some people at William and Mary, I believe).


Slow. Painful. Difficult. The worst part is that many of the people in my
class don't know of lex/yacc, et al (some don't understand that there are
computers that use somethings besides VMS and Pascal, but that's another
story as well). I'm no compiler-whiz (I'm barely passing the class, thank
you), but I have learned a *very* important rule: bad tools can make a bad
language even worse. :-)
--
J. Eric Townsend uunet!sugar!flatline!jet com6@uhnix1.uh.edu

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