R.I.P. Niklaus Wirth

[Jurgen Keller]

(01-05-2024 03:16 AM)Namir Wrote:  ...
Professor Wirth replied to my editor that creating a new programming languages is not as easy as it seems.
...
He [Dr Ichbia] added that one cannot build complex real-world applications with simple solutions like Pascal or Modula-2.

I guess both Dr Ichbia and Professor Wirth can discuss and compare their programming languages in the great beyond.

Namir,

thank you for sharing this anecdote. I fully agree that designing a new programming language is a very complex task. A big challenge is to make things easy on the surface. However, under the hood that could need complex algorithms. Example: garbage collector. A very convenient feature because you don't need to think about deleting objects anymore. However, implementing an efficient and fast garbage collector needs very sophisticated algorithms.

At work, I have to use Java. This programming language added so many features over time that you often have to think more about how to solve a task best in Java than to think about the actual problem you want to solve. Google and Stack Overflow are a software engineer's best friends ;-)

If you are interested in how to design a new programming language, then Go is a good candidate to read about. There are also many videos on YouTube about the motivation to invent a new programming language and what the design decisions were. In the end, as it's the case with many things, it's also a matter of personal preference. As you might guess, my preference is more on the Wirth side.