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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Mar 17)

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Mon Mar 17 09:26:13 EST 2003 
Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Mike Meyer wrote:
> > 
> > QOTW:  "We will perhaps eventually be writing only small modules which are
> > identified by name as they are used to build larger ones, so that devices
> > like indentation, rather than delimiters, might become feasible for
> > expressing local structure in the source language." --Donald E. Knuth,
> > "Structured Programming with goto Statements", Computing Surveys, Vol 6
> > No 4, Dec. 1974
> 
> Wait a sec... think about that for a minute.  Is he saying that one
> will be able just to list a simple series of commands which draw on
> functionality defined in specialized, application-specific modules?
> 
> That the resulting language will be so high level that, for the most 
> part, control flow and complicated nested structures will be unnecessary?

93. When someone says "I want a programming language in which I
    need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
  -- Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  C++ is a siren song.  It *looks* like a HLL in which you ought to
  be able to write an application, but it really isn't.
                                       -- Alain Picard, comp.lang.lisp
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