What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

rossberg at ps.uni-sb.de writes:

| think that it is too relevant for the discussion at hand. Moreover,
| Harper talks about a relative concept of "C-safety".

Then, I believe you missed the entire point.

   First point: "safety" is a *per-language* property.  Each language
   comes with its own notion of safety.  ML is ML-safe; C is C-safe;
   etc.  I'm not being facetious; I think this is the core of the
   confusion. 

   Safety is an internal consistency check on the formal definition of
   a language.  In a sense it is not interesting that a language is
   safe, precisely because if it weren't, we'd change the language to
   make sure it is!  I regard safety as a tool for the language
   designer, rather than a criterion with which we can compare
   languages.


[...]

| Or are you trying to suggest that we should indeed consider C safe for
| the purpose of this discussion?

I'm essentially suggesting "silly arguments" (as noted by someone
in another message) be left out for the sake of productive
conversation.  Apparently, I did not communicate that point well enough.

-- Gaby