From: Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@...>
Date: 2005-10-21T00:46:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Advantages of Ruby

Edward Faulkner <ef@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> Computer languages fall on a continuum that moves from low-level,
> hardware-oriented code up toward more abstract, human-oriented code.
> A rough ordering, IMHO, goes like this:
>
> assembly
> C
> C++
> Java
> Python
> Perl,Ruby
> Haskell
> Lisp

Getting off-topic, but this is a vast misjudgement of Lisp.  Lisp
allows you to program in every layer, be it low-level code (where it
is nothing less than a good macro-assembler) or even microcode up to
state-of-the-art, distributed objected-oriented systems.

Remember that the Lisp machines were programmed in Lisp down to the
core.  (Heck, some even had a C compiler written in it...)

> Why don't more people use the really high level languages?  Mostly
> because languages are not only tools, but also habits of thought.  And
> habits of thought evolve very slowly.  

Full ack. :-/

> regards,
> Ed
-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org