Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!mach1!torn!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!gatech!news.ans.net!cmcl2!panix!sethb
From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: quote on APL interpreted
Message-ID: <C1nAzG.726@panix.com>
Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless
References: <1993Jan22.173012.1749@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 02:30:52 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <1993Jan22.173012.1749@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM> eem@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.COM (Mcdonnell, Eugene E.) writes:

>Richard Gaylord is puzzled by the awkward Englishing of a 
>sentence given in translation from the French, and attributed to 
>Anthony Hoare.
>
>My recollection is that the quote is not due to the Englishman 
>Hoare but rather to the Dutchman Dijkstra, who, in an 
>epigrammatic survey of the major programming languages, circa 
>1970, which was generally more insulting to other languages than 
>to APL, wrote about it, as best as I can recall, that "APL is a 
>mistake carried out to perfection."

He continued (from memory):

"It is the programming language of the future for the programming
techniques of the past."

I believe it was BASIC about which he said -"Teaching it should be a
criminal offense"- (it might have been COBOL).

Seth
