"One conclusion I drew from the wildly divergent comments on the HOPL-2 paper - and from many other sources - is that there is no agreement on what a programming language really is and what its main purpose is supposed to be. Is a programming language a tool for instructing machines? A means of commu"
"This implies that language design parts ways from the "purer'' and more abstract disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy. To serve its users, a general-purpose programming language must be eclectic and take many practical and sociological factors into account. In particular, every language is"