I just read a paper written by Per Brinch Hansen. He is most commonly known in the IT world for his papers on concurrent programming theory. Actually, I wanted to formally read into Remote Procedure Calls and that is how I found his theories.
Interestingly, he wrote in 1993 to C.A.R. Hoare:
The 1980s will probably be remembered as the decade in which programmers took a gigantic step backwards by switching from secure Pascal-like languages to insecure C-like languages. I have
no rational explanation for this trend. But it seems to me that if computer programmers cannot even agree that security is an essential requirement of any programming language, then we have
not yet established a discipline of computing based on commonly accepted principles.
I had this very discussion underlining his statement just a few days ago, why new programming languages tend to get rid of some principles that have proven worthy due to common practise. Apple uses Objective-C as their primary language for iOS development. A lot of frameworks require C or C++ knowledge and are not completely available in Objective-C. Also, C# is mixing method declaration with method implementation in the same file, even in the same “scope” as you do not even declare and implement in separate regions.
Sadly, Mr Hansen seems to have been right as the most-common mobile platforms require Java or C-languages for development. However, Pascal syntax is still rather common for writing pseudo-code.
-
Anonymous
-
Anonymous