From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tlaronde@polynum.com Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 14:11:28 +0200 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <20090905121128.GA631@polynum.com> References: <422c2c66f1d93f0928ca31b8c1e0c927@hamnavoe.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Subject: Re: [9fans] nice quote Topicbox-Message-UUID: 656b6622-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 07:22:37AM -0400, Akshat Kumar wrote: > "Programming languages are just tools, after all." > > Considering that Plan 9 has only two inherent languages, > and its users often push for work to be done in only those, > what is the Plan 9 perspective of languages and tools in > relation to each other? I don't know for "the Plan 9 perspective" and have no authority to talk "for Plan 9", but since almost all interpreters or compilers are written in C, whether completely or the bootstapping procedure (a C core that is able to interpret a subset of the language to generate a binary for the non optimized version of a complete compiler etc.), there are all the tools as long as there is a C compiler for the machine. The remaining is, IMHO, user stuff: one has all tools needed to customize. The only "lack" in C is perhaps defined full control for arithmetic/calculus. That's probably why FORTRAN is still here and has still its strength in this area. Just my 2 centimes, -- Thierry Laronde (Alceste) http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C