Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

["Kelly Hall" <hall@priest.com>]

"Randy McLaughlin" <randy@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:wDHJa.1033$lT4.267@fe04.atl2.webusenet.com...
> Your references still do not define what a computer
> programming language is.  More than that with the standards proposed many
> main-line programming languages would fail their standards.

Ah - again I've been insufficiently clear.

I never intended to provide you with a reference definition of a 'computer
programming language'.  I only included references so you could look up the
parts of *my* definition that you don't seem familiar with: the various
formalisms for expressing semantics and syntax, as well as the hurdle of
Turing-completeness.

> The 'Turing completeness' applies to computational languages.  To limit a
> language to computational limits what a computer will be allowed to do.

Not at all.  One is free to propose a language that can do more computation
than a Turing machine; to me, however, you must do *at least* as much
computation as a Turing machine to meet my definition of a 'computer
programming language'.  Anything less is not interesting to me.

HTML does *no* computation, so it doesn't meet my definition.  Nor do other
markup languages like XML and SGML.

You don't have to agree with my definition.  But if you disagree, please
propose something better than 'a computer programming language is a language
used to program computers'.  Sheesh.

> One idiot claims he does not care what is documented he only cares about
> what two people think that he respects.

Personally, I feel much the same way although I might not set a "hard and
fast" number.  My definition doesn't seem to come from any particular
reference so much as it comes from 20 years of programming, a BS in computer
science, and several years of graduate school studying (among other things)
computer programming languages.  I'm pretty confident that my definition
wouldn't get too much argument from my professors or from current
practioners in the field of 'computer programming languages'.

I believe that practioners *always* define their own argot / jargon.  Other
people come along later and attempt to write it down and provide a reference
for the folks outside of the clique.  If the field changes rapidly, the
references will be out of date to some degree or other.  The argot/jargon
serves to separate the practioners from the outsiders, and this effect is
somewhat intended.

Kelly