On Fri, 11 Aug 2000 10:57:03 +0100, Neil Freebairn wrote:
>Chris Huff <chr### [at] maccom> wrote in message
>news:chrishuff-E4C9B8.09352610082000@news.povray.org...
>> In article <3992a1a5@news.povray.org>, "Neil Freebairn"
>> <nei### [at] lineonenet> wrote:
>> > Many of the features new to POV 3.1 (and perhaps some to the
>> > soon-to-be-released v3.5) bring the scene language closer to a
>> > language proper, say a 4GL.
>>
>> Uhh, "4GL"?
>
>4th generation language, which here is my shorthand for words I'm not
>familiar with to describe the kinds of features one sees in C, Pascal, etc,

These languages are usually thought of as 3rd generation languages (the
first two generations being machine code and assembler).
4GLs are high level, declarative languages which either don't have
explicit procedural constructs (like loops or ifs) or at least rarely
need them. SQL is one. Some people think the unix shell is one. Indeed
we could think of PovScript as a 4GL (we don't tell the engine how to
render the scene, we just describe the scene and tell it to render at
some specific resolution).

I think 4GLs went somewhat out of fashion with the OO hype.

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Nicht an Tueren mangelt es,
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | sondern an der Einrichtung (aka Content).
| |   | hjp### [at] wsracat      |    -- Ale### [at] univieacat
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       zum Thema Portale in at.linux

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