Lies in education [was Re: The "loop and a half"]

[MRAB]

On 2017-10-12 03:47, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN wrote:
> Actually, FORTRAN and COBOL and Algol (for its control structures)
> Trying to support both of the first two was entertaining --
> when you declared a variable, it wasn't enough to say it was an Integer:
> you had to also declare whether it was represented in Binary or Decimal,
> and also specify the desired precision.
> 
> The IBM/360 architecture supported both binary and decimal integers,
> where the decimals were stored as BCD nybbles of arbitrary fixed length
> (as opposed to binary integers matching the machine word size)
> 
> The world migrated away from PL/I back in those days because of
> the one-size fits none consequences of trying to do everything.
> So I always find myself looking askance when language designers
> try to repeat the exercise.
> 
> You know, like designing a largely-interpreted object-oriented
> language with libraries supporting a functional programming style.
> I think I've seen a language like that somewhere around this forum.
> 
> But I like it anyway
> 
I think the difference is that those other languages tried to be 
"complete" closed languages.

Python, on the other hand, doesn't try to do everything itself, and it's 
open, so you can add functionality written in other languages and call 
external programs that already exist.

[snip]