Re: Re. Lamport / Composition

[Paul Walker <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In message <199805211626.RAA26890@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Adrian Lawrence
<adrian.lawrence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>You can reason about "toy"
>languages, but "real" languages are needed in practice. 

One of the transputer architects at INMOS once said verbatim that he
thought occam was a toy language. Can't remember the reasons given, and
I'm sure most of them are overcome by occam3. 

Several of you have told me that a compiler is too specialised a program
to write in occam, but to a casual observer it seems to me that most
"real" languages have compliers written in their own language. Even if
there was one there would be plenty more excuses for people to ignore
occam, but until:

 there is a compiler of occam written in occam;
 and it farms itself out over a reasonable number of processors;
 and gives genuine speed-up from so doing;

     it is too easy to rubbish occam as a toy.

my 2d-worth

Paul
-- 
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