15 Aug
2005
15 Aug
'05
5:14 p.m.
On 16/08/2005, at 3:07 AM, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
Things like i + 1 =: i or i + 1 -> i make much
more
sense. This typical high level language format makes
reading code confusing. Sometimes one reads left to
right for operations while others, one has to look to
the right to find the sequence and then look to the
left to complete.
I've always wondered why the form i + 1 -> i never took off. I recall
at least one
programming language I looked at (can't remember the name right now
but it was
in a book on compiler writing) that did it this way. Not only is this
more
natural but it'd have been much easier to explain to those pesky
first year
University Maths students I had to teach programming to.
I know of one case that an upper management person
sent code back to the programmer and said that he
must have made a mistake. It looked like he'd sent
the specification for the code and not the actual
program. You know you are doing the right thing
with this kind of compliment. I doubt one would ever
see that happen when coding in C.
I don't like c very much but I do appreciate that it's really a high-
level assembler
and for it's time it's not too bad - although I don't think it's much
of an improvement
on BCPL.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"