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From: gjr@hplgr2.hpl.hp.com (Guillermo (Bill) J. Rozas)
Subject: Re: Compiler abstractions [was: Wanted: programming language for 9 yr old]
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In-Reply-To: blume@atomic.cs.princeton.edu's message of 03 Oct 1995 17:52:51 GMT
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 01:51:03 GMT
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In article <BLUME.95Oct3135251@atomic.cs.princeton.edu> blume@atomic.cs.princeton.edu (Matthias Blume) writes:

|   After all, there are purely logical calculi (e.g. Turing machines,
|   RAMs, lambda-calculus, denotational semantics, ...), which are
|   adequate to explain the properties of computing and of programming
|   languages without any need to mention actual hardware.

Hah?  Turing machines, RAM, lambda-calculus and denotational semantics
ARE specifications for hardware no less and no more than the ISA
(instruction set architecture) for any commercial processor.  A
computer architecture manual is a description of a formal langugage
for carrying out computations.  These days such a language is often
defined formally in terms of some other formal language.
