Path: news.net.uni-c.dk!logbridge.uoregon.edu!feeder.qis.net!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: yvan.radenac@equant.com (Yvan Radenac) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.clos,comp.lang.cobol Subject: Re: I need your experience - classification and comparison of languages Date: 28 Jan 2002 06:55:44 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 74 Message-ID: References: <3C4CCE5E.DC2187C2@shaw.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.6.68.65 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1012229744 18747 127.0.0.1 (28 Jan 2002 14:55:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jan 2002 14:55:44 GMT Xref: news.net.uni-c.dk comp.lang.ada:123846 comp.lang.beta:13113 comp.lang.c++:651821 comp.lang.clos:15844 comp.lang.cobol:113237 Thank you for your posts, it's the first time i use the news and my english is far from perfect. Thank you for all url you gave me. It's a good beginning for my report. I'm interresting in your experience as programmer, responsible of projects, .... As i will make a average of all results to obtain something the most objective i can. I found some old documents and comparisons (they are written between 1992 and 1997) or very subjective (like Java versus others by Sun, ....). It seems that the languages the most used will be: Ada (95), Beta, OCaml, CLOS, C++, Objective-C, Eiffel, Java, Modula-3, O Oberon, Object Pascal (like Turbo-Pascal, Delphi, ...), Perl, Python, Ruby, Sather?, Simula, Smalltalk. I don't add to this list all the languages that have only a commercial implementation, like VBA, ... as i write a report about "oo languages and their public implementation". If you think i forget one or more oo common languages, let me know. The result will be posted under the Free Documentation Licence from GNU. Of course, if you want to answer this table, thank you. Regards Yvan Comparison: ---------- It's based on this scale table (to simplify): Very bad|bad|Correct|Good|Very good| --------|---|-------|----|---------| - - | - | O | + | + + | Language|Readibility|Writability|Reliability|Cost --------|-----------|-----------|-----------|---- | | | | P.S.: a resume of the criterias, based on a course of The University of Ottawa by Szpakowicz: Comparison: ---------- Readability: - abstraction, support for generality: procedural abstraction, data absraction. - absence of ambiguity (and of too much choice). - Orthogonality: no restrictions on combinations of concepts. For example, can a procedure parametrer have ANY type? Can EVERYTHING be evaluated? - Expressivity of control and data structures. (Exemples of low expressive power: machine languages). - Appearance: style of comments, ... Writability: - Abstraction and simplicy like readibility. - Expressivity, like readibility. - Modularity and tools for modularization, support for integrated programmer's environments. Reliability: - Safety for the programmer (type checking, error and exception handling, unambiguous naming). Cost: - Development time (ease of programming, availability of code). - Efficiency of implementation: how easy it is to build a language processor. - Translation time and quality of object code. - Portability and standardization.