RE: Modern Programming Language Concepts

At 13:33 10-08-01, Lee Goddard wrote:
> > From: Helmut Enck-Radana [mailto:[email protected]]
> >
> > On 10 Aug 2001, at 10:49, Lee Goddard wrote:
> > > What new concepts have been made manifest in languages that I can
> > > use today? I'll try them out.
> >
> > Seems you are asking 2 questions:
> >
> > 1. What new concepts have been made manifest in languages?
> > [...]
> > 2. Which of these languages can I use today?
>
>Actually, I was asking what "new" *concepts* have been
>made manifest in languages, that I might employ these
>concepts in Perl extensions.

Sorry, misunderstood you. In this case it is even more difficult to give an 
answer to your question. There are a lot of programming language concepts 
which aren't compatible with each other, and the problem with more 
traditional languages is not only that you can't do things which you should 
be able to do, but also (and may be even more) that you can do things which 
you shouldn't be able to do (like e.g. modifying the value of a variable). 
Finding out how language features can be combined which originally weren't 
meant to be combined seems to be a very difficult task, since AFAIK there 
is still no language which combines at least most of the important advanced 
language concepts, which separately are well understood.

I read some interesting discussions between the developers of Python on 
integrating some advanced concepts into their implementation. Most 
proposals are dropped after thinking about the consequences more 
thoroughly. Still they managed to add some fine features to their language. 
What was possible in Python should also be possible in Perl. (But I'm not 
up-to-date regarding the development of Perl - may be these things are 
there already.)

If you want to understand modern programming language concepts you should 
try to do some programming with declarative languages like Haskell 
<http://www.haskell.org>, Clean <http://www.cs.kun.nl/~clean>, Mercury 
<http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/>, Erlang, Prolog, Refal, ...

>Thus my question is explicitly relevant to this list,
>and you have accidentally dodged the issue, as adeptly
>as a high-ranking academic :)

Sorry, I didn't want to pretend to be one.

- Helmut