Complementary language?

[Robin Becker]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Robin Becker <robin at SPAMREMOVEjessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Alex Martelli wrote:
>>.....
>>
>>>If you're looking for SERIOUS multiparadigmaticity, I think Oz may be
>>>best -- <http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/book.html> (the book's
>>>authors critique the vagueness of the "paradigm" concept, and prefer
>>>"model", but that's much the same thing).
>>
>>according to the language shootout at
>>
>>http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all&sort=cpu
>>
>>Mozart/Oz comes last in cpu score. I suspect that may be due to 
>>unfamilarity or poor implementation of the test codes. Everybody 'knows'
>>that benchamrks are always wrong, but which score moves this language to
>>the top in your opinion?
> 
> 
> Hmmm, I'm not sure how to parse this question.  Robert Kern claimed:
> "You could very easily learn more approaches to programming through
> Common Lisp than three other languages", and I'm pointing out that, if
> what you're after is to "learn more approaches to programming" via the
> built-in features of a single language, Oz (with the CTMCP book) may
> well be numero uno.  Judging from the blurb on the book's back, as I
> also mentioned, Norvig, hardly a slouch when it comes to Lisp, appears
> to share this assessment.

Well your utility function seems to be related to "learn more approaches 
to programming". I suspect there may be some programming language 
measure which would push really high level languages way up.  Simply 
scanning the Mozart documentation seems to indicate it has a number of 
interesting, but not unique features. From the outside it seems 
difficult to say whether say "distributed programming" is uniquely 
easily implemented in Oz or whether it's something like pyro built using 
more primitive constructs.

> 
> What the "language shootout" can possibly have to do with this issue
> entirely escapes me.  Quite apart from "benchmarks are always wrong", I
> don't think they're even _remotely_ trying to benchmark "how much does
> learning this language teach you about different approaches to
> programming" -- it would seem to be a mighty tall order to even set up a
> controlled experiment to measure _that_ quantitatively!
...
I agree entirely with this last, but this is about language comparisons 
and if we're being objective we need to do some measurements. If this is 
impossible then discussion reduces to 'my language is better than yours' 
which is pretty futile.

> Alex
>  


-- 
Robin Becker