>>>> "Huw" == Huw Davies
<huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au> writes:
Huw> On 15/08/2005, at 11:12 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>>>>>> "Huw" == Huw Davies
<huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au>
>>>>>> writes:
>
Huw> I always wonder why people think BLISS is such a bad language. I
Huw> know that many people inside DEC don't like it as they were
Huw> forced to use it as the new "standard" language but personally
Huw> BLISS is one of my favorites.
> Because it is so easy to write bugs with it, and
so hard to find
> them.
Huw> I agree that missing .'s did cause some problems but I recall
Huw> having to debug far fewer missing .'s compared to missing equal
Huw> signs in c. The number of times I've written if (a = b) when I
Huw> mean if (a == b) is the main reason I refuse to write c programs
Huw> (not even for money).
Right, but at least C compilers can be asked to warn you about that.
> The use of . is quite warped and utterly against
high level
> language principles. (The only thing that even comes close is
> FORTH.)
Huw> Well the everything is an lvalue is different, but in some ways
Huw> it's easier to explain i := .i + 1 to new programmers than i :=
Huw> i + 1 where the context of i changes (it's even worse in FORTRAN
Huw> where the syntax is i = i + 1 given that FORTRAN was written for
Huw> maths/physics types....
Yes, if a novice programmer were to learn Bliss as the first language,
I suppose the risk is much reduced. But that never happens, so it
doesn't help.
paul