In his book titled "Quick C", Al Stevens gives us a quick rundown
on the origin, purpose and usefulness of so many programming
languages.
COBOL was designed so that managers could read code.
BASIC was designed for people who are not programmers.
FORTRAN is for scientists.
ADA comes from a committee - a government committee no less.
PILOT is for teachers.
PASCAL is for students.
LOGO is for children
APL is for martians.
FORTH, LISP and PROLOG are specialty languages.
C, however, is for programmers.
bondage-and-discipline language n.
A language (such as
Pascal Ada, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly
general-purpose, is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of
`right programming' even though said theory is demonstrably
inadequate for systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose
programming....
bondage-and-discipline language: A language (such as {{Pascal}}
{{Ada}}, APL, or Prolog) that, though ostensibly general-purpose,
is designed so as to enforce an author's theory of `right
programming' even though said theory is demonstrably inadequate for
systems hacking or even vanilla general-purpose programming....
Pascal n.
An Algol-descended language designed by
Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional
tool for elementary programming. This language, designed primarily
to keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus
extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of
view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact,
became the ancestor of a large family of languages including
Modula-2 and Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline l
summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly
funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&...
