Beginning C++ in FreeBSD

[Rahul Siddharthan]

Chris Pressey said on Apr 26, 2004 at 10:28:44:
> Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd at online.fr> wrote:
> > Chris Pressey wrote:
> > > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent word in
> > > > English-- and I mean exact equivalent, including all the possible
> > > > meanings and nuances that this word can express in the Greek
> > > > language-- should be enough as an example, right?
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, no, it's not enough.
> > > 
> > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent English
> > > word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, book, or library would be
> > > enough though.
> > 
> > Which has very little relevance to programming languages.
> 
> I disagree; I think the parallel to optimization in different languages
> is quite strong. 

The question was whether you can do something in one language that you
can't in another.  If one interprets that your way (wanting an example
of a word in Greek that can't be expressed by an entire library in
English), the answer is clearly no.  If one talks about conciseness
and optimisation, obviously that's a different question.


> > [on functional languages]
> > So now I'm wondering: why aren't these languages more popular?
> 
> Well, how often are they taught in schools?

I first heard of ML from a computer science student in the UK.
Apparently these things were standard parts of their education.  In
fact, ocaml is developed at INRIA in France, and the original ML was
developed at Edinburgh university.  And lisp was popular until the
1980s, and has its base even today, though most people only encounter
it in emacs (which is not "common lisp" and doesn't do a lot of the
neat things a full-blown lisp does). 

The impression I get is not that they're not taught in schools, but
that they're viewed as too "academic" and not "real-world" enough.  I
guess I can't judge since I'm academic too...

Rahul