What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Darren New]

Andreas Rossberg wrote:
> Maybe I don't understand what you mean with ADT here, but all languages 
> with a decent module system support ADTs in the sense it is usually 
> understood, see ML for a primary example.

OK.  Maybe some things like ML and Haskell and such that I'm not 
intimately familiar with do, now that you mention it, yes.

> Classes in most OOPLs are essentially beefed-up ADTs as well.

Err, no. There's nothing really abstract about them. And their values 
are mutable. So while one can think about them as an ADT, one actually 
has to write code to (for example) calculate or keep track of how many 
entries are on a stack, if you want that information.

> Not counting C/C++, I don't know when I last worked with a typed 
> language that does *not* have this ability... (which is slightly 
> different from ADTs, btw)

Java? C#? Icon? Perl? (Hmmm... Pascal does, IIRC.) I guess you just work 
with better languages than I do. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     My Bath Fu is strong, as I have
     studied under the Showerin' Monks.