Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE!marvin!nowias00 From: nowias00@marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Mark Nowiasz) Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: BETA questions Date: 26 Apr 1995 08:33:15 GMT Organization: CS Department, University of Dortmund, Germany Lines: 105 Message-ID: <3nl0gb$sq5@fbi-news.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> References: <3jq90s$ojp@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <3n5eht$m2i@fbi-news.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> <3niffk$qik@fbi-news.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Wilfried Rupflin (wr@polly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de) wrote: : |> I am one of those students who was forced to learn BETA and : ^^^^^^ : OK, that's the problem of freshmen: you are 'forced' to learn some new : language anyway. (And I claim that BETA isn't the worst choice by far!) : Which language would you have preferred? Let's make it clear : I do NOT consider BETA to be a "bad" language, but I think BETA is a not yet complete language, because there are certain features missing, especially multiplre inheritance. As an exercise, we had to build a classifation tree (which came from biology), with concepts like mammal, bird, predator. The problem was that (for example) an eagle is a predator but is also a bird, like a lion is a mammal and a predator. It was _extremely_ difficult to find a suitable classification scheme. In the (at this time) only available book describing the BETA language there are some notes which say that the BETA language may has to be extended, so I cannot think of BETA as a "finished" language. On the other hand, there is a real nice feature in BETA : the coroutines. I think at the present time there is no satisfying language for teaching object-orientated programming (like PASCAL for the imperative ones), so I do not really know which language I would have preferred. (I don't think C++ is a very good language to teach somebody oop-concepts, but I think it's the best "real-world" OOP-language because of it's efficiency. : |> had to cope with severe flaws of BETA resp. the Mjoelnir BETA Compiler : : |> : You should know that for the lecture an outdated version (2.5) of the : BETA system was used. The lecturer, Prof. Doberkat, found the : quality of this version fairly acceptable (compared to alternatives) : and didn't like to have any risk when intoducing a new language and : a new system to more than 300 students the first time ("never change : a winning team ..."). So most of your complaints do not apply to : the current version which is out for more than half a year by now. A compiler which does not implement the BETA-standard correctly can hardly be called version 2.5 - it should have a version number below 1. : |> - The (only yet existing) Compiler did NOT correctly implement the BETA : |> language (no repetitions of static elements, one has to use (* instead : |> of {, etc. ) : |> : This is not quite correct: The compiler has a few restrictions : currently (among others the one you quoted) but they are all : documented in the compiler manual (and were mentioned in the : lecture you [should have] attended). Everything else is implemented : correctly. That's right - it was mentioned _after_ we had to write certain programs which were impossible to compile due to certain restrictions of the compiler. (Personally, I do not see any reasons for the restrictions / incompatibilties with the book). : The other problem originates from the language book which is : slightly outdated already. But again, these are minor points : which are well documented and have been explained too. The book is IMHO another weak point of BETA - I think it is badly structured. : I got about half the size for your Fibonacci program (with -nodebug): : -rwxr-x--- 1 wr irb 131072 Apr 25 10:37 fibo* : ... with debugging information it's a bit more: : -rwxr-x--- 1 wr irb 163840 Apr 25 10:35 fibo* Version 3.0 or 2.5 ? : Try the new (current) BETA system and you will see the difference. : I hope you'll enjoy then to program in BETA (and forget that you : were 'forced' to do so). I do not considered it to be "wasted" time (neither do I dislike BETA), since I learned another programming language (till then, I knew K&R C (yuck), Ansi C, C++, Pascal, Prolog, 68xxx assembler, (quite) litte Modula-2 and Oberon), but I do not think that BETA is superior to C++ (my personal favorite :-) ) except for the really useful coroutine feature (but which can be simulated - to some extend - by using static vars in C++, at least if one uses the feature to simulate generators). -- Mark =============================================================== Mark Nowiasz nowias00@marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Kronenstrasse 3 44625 Herne Germany __ __ _ ,--'--`--. _ ,--',_`--_____________ |_||____--____||_| |____|==___________----` (===(======)===) (====(==========/ \\ `--' // `--'\ / \\_ ,--, _// _,--\ /----._____ `-| |-' ,'_____\--/___________`---, `__' `-.____\___________,-----' Windows : from people who brought you edlin =============================================================