The establishment of formal standards for proofs about programs [...] and the proposal that the semantics of a programming language may be defined independently of all processors for that language, by establishing standards of rigor for proofs about programs in the language, appears to be novel.
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pp. 19–20Robert W Floyd
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A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.
Paul Graham
Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."
John Backus
To the designer of programming languages, I say: unless you can support the paradigms I use when I program, or at least support my extending your language into one that does support my programming methods, I don't need your shiny new languages. [...] To persuade me of the merit of your language, you must show me how to construct programs in it.
Robert W Floyd
8: A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.
Erik Naggum
Floyd, Robert W
Flur, Wolfgang
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