Re: What would your ideal language be like...

[Doug Landauer <address@hidden>]

On Friday, Feb 21, 2003, at 08:57 US/Pacific, DLWeinreb@attbi.com wrote:
> I think what you're getting at here is the tradeoff between
> a language for one domain and a general language.  If you,
> as a "language consumer", only ever want to work on one
> particular domain (e.g. "files and strings"),

This is a little disingenuous.  It's like calling "integers"
or "functions" a particular domain.  Any language that cannot
handle such basic tools as files and strings has severe applicability
problems in the real world.  Any language tutorial or reference
that fails to at least point to descriptions of these basic tools
is flawed.

I agree with the rest of your message, about extensibility vs
built-in domains, but I just think that files and strings are too
basic to be a good example of this, and that Kevin had a point.

FWIW, I think Kevin should use Python.

   -- Doug