Modula II

Darius Blasband <darius@phidani.be>
23 Feb 1996 18:24:24 -0500

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| List of all articles for this month |
From: Darius Blasband <darius@phidani.be>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 23 Feb 1996 18:24:24 -0500
Organization: PhiDaNi Software S.P.R.L., Brussels, Belgium
References: 96-01-037 96-02-187 96-02-226 96-02-237
Keywords: modula, standards, design



Pat Terry wrote:
>
> I dispute that. Anyone who knows anything of the Modula-2
> standardisation effort ...


> [I don't suppose that anyone in the Modula-2 committee took the failure of
> the VDM effort as an indication that the language was too big? -John]


No, not at all. IMHO, for its time, Modula II was the best thing
around, concentrating on vital features, leaving bells and whistles
out. It was a small language, with reasonably well-defined features. I
think that the failure of the VDM effort was not due to Modula II
itself, but to the very simple fact that this kind of standardization
is simply not well suited for this class of language. While I have no
evidence of this, my wild guess would be that any similar attempt on
another language such as C or C++ would have produced even worse
results.


Then, one might say that Modula II is indeed too big, but all other
languages in common use (No mentionning ML or Prolog...) would have
been too big as well..


Darius
--

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