Question:
Which is the most powerful computer language?
2006-01-04 10:22:56 UTC
Which is the most powerful computer language?
Four answers:
nightstudies
2006-01-05 03:03:27 UTC
Short answer, it depends what you want.



The guy who though that Prolog was the most powerful was tripping. Logic languages like Prolog are the best for for some unusual domains, but they're actually pretty limiting - a lot of sorts of programs are a lot harder to write in Prolog than they'd be in almost anything else.



I think it might be useful to have the facilities of Prolog lying around in a library, ready to use on the rare occasion that they're a good fit, but I'd never want to write most of a program in Prolog.



My favorite language is one that time forgot, smalltalk. It has a number of features missing from most programming environments:

1. You can save the state of a running program (threads and all), and restore it (sort of like putting a laptop into hibernation).

2. You can debug and rewrite programs while they are running. You can rewrite a routine and restart it, deep inside of a calculation. Programs and data can be edited live. And data can always be saved and reused - you don't have to recreate data each time, or figure out a way to save it and initialize it each time.

3. The entire system, gui and all, has source code available all of the time. It has browsers that make it easy to search through the code and find things.

4. It's just a syntax thing, but all of the parameters are named in a function call - that tends to make code easier to read.

5. The language was designed for humans not computers - it leaves out everything that other languages put in to make programs more efficient for the computer - leaving that stuff out gets rid of a lot of clutter.

6. Since it has no restrictive data typing on variables you're less likely to make a decision early on that limits how you can finish a program.



Unfortunately I'm not sure if I can recommend a great smalltalk system. You can download Squeak, and it's good and has a lot of users, but it's not professional grade. Parts of it have rough edges, and it's not the fastest version of smalltalk.



You could play with the free (for noncommercial use) version of Cincom (runs on everything) - or buy the commercial version if you have $500 to blow.



On Windows you could buy a copy of Dolphin.



Researchers (now employed at Sun) showed that it's possible to write an optimizing compiler for Smalltalk that makes it as fast as other languages, but Sun canned that project and put those people on Java.



...



On the other hand, if you want a language designed to force software to be reliable, (say for medical or military use) you could go to the opposite end of the spectrum and program in Ada. The newest versions of Ada are a good language, and GNU makes a free version (GNAT).



I'm mostly used to C++, but I don't think of it as a good language, just as one I'm used to.



There's a mania for strongly typed functional languages among academia these days. I'm not the hugest fan of those. Some of them have a few nice tricks built into them, but I'm convinced that strongly typed languages force you to "optimize too soon" and make decisions too early in your design process.
?
2016-09-29 14:23:10 UTC
Most Powerful Computer
KS
2006-01-04 10:51:57 UTC
In terms of logical programming, its the PROLOG that is powerful. But we all know in our heart that every language is made for its own purpose. Its like right tool for right purpose. There is nothing like superior or inferior.



They all were written to server the purpose of productivity. We can code in BASIC for some applications and make a billion $. And using Fortran for that purpose might be unproductive.



One more thing is that, in terms of performance, nothing compares to Assembly, and even if there were competetion and scientific study for a very large sample of data, then we might come up a performance difference of thousands of times across borders with even only considering best professionals coding on only assembly . The code in any case for any application can be carefully tailored and tailored and tailored and......



And improved every time....



Hope it explains.



But u could always catagorized what to do for what. Even using some tools may improve the application of a scripting language. Some times with some tools u acheive that is not even possible with normal programming languges.



Like with EXPECT tool in Unix you could fake input from file to be password that it does not normally accept.



And in C# you cannot throw any exception that does not inherit .NET's exception base class. But in same environment u could code in Assembly code ( the MSIL ) and make it to create an exception that does not inherit from .NET base class and put lots of pressure on environments memory.



So there are things that so called all purpose languages cant do, leave about comparing their power. So u might want to use a right language for solving some particular problem. No language is best or complete. Its with our knowledge we exploit their features.
2016-11-11 08:25:15 UTC
all and sundry of those toddlers are too youthful to bear in mind that the mummy language to C,Ada,Java,Pascal, ruby and quite a few different others replaced into ALGOL. Fortran left no progeny! Cobol left none! Lisp's progeny are all hippies! (very cool yet rarely mainstream!) How is the flexibility of a king judged? by way of historical past! so the winner is ALGOL! playstation ... My favorite languages of all time are Perl, and at college it replaced into snobol.


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