Did Donald Knuth Choose the Wrong Language??

Submitted by metaperl on Wed, 09/28/2005 - 11:50pm.
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Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming Series uses his own procedural assembly languaged called mix. Now, the question becomes: should Knuth have used a functional language to describe his algorihtms? Should TeX have been written in a functional language?

Computers have a procedural architecture. Do the roots of computation imply anything about the best branches?

I need to update my comment.
Submitted by metaperl on Wed, 09/28/2005 - 11:52pm.

I need to update my comment. The original AoCP was written in MiX. The updated AoCP used MMIX which was based on more modern architectures.

However, the fundamental point still holds. Knuth went from one procedural architecture to another... with apparently no need for functional programming.

I'm sure if you asked Dr.
Submitted by samphillips on Sun, 10/02/2005 - 10:58pm.

I'm sure if you asked Dr. Knuth he'd probably say no. From what I've seen Knuth is much more interested in imperative computation, and macro languages.

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