Re: Thought this was funny

["Christopher J. Henrich" <chenrich@monmouth.com>]

In article <bn58ip$skq6o$3@ID-175126.news.uni-berlin.de>, Vinzent
'Gadget' Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com> wrote:

> Xenos wrote:
> I've seen worse things:
> 
> |if <boolean expression> = True then
> |   Boolean_Variable := True;
> |else
> |   Boolean_Variable := False;
> |end if;
> 
> (Well, the original was written in Pascal, but that doesn't matter for
> the demonstration, I guess)...
> 
> Can someone here see any reason, why someone should not simply write
> 
> |Boolean_Variable := <boolean expression>;
> 
> instead?
> 
> The "<boolean expression> = True" construct alone... *sigh*
I think these are the signs of a larval-form programmer, who is not
sure of what is legal, or of how to understand the more abstract
definitions of what is legal.

Once upon a time, I was a larval-form FORTRAN IV programmer, and the
DO-loop was the most powerful programming construct I knew.  Or thought
I knew... I knew that "DO I = 1, 10" was legal code, and I knew that
"DO I = M1, M2" was legal code, but I was not sure if other, more
general, integer-valued expressions could be used in a DO-loop.  After
all, there were those strange, non-orthogonal restrictions on what
expressions could be used as array indices.

So, I coded by copying examples or adapting examples to my needs. 
After a while, I learned.

-- 
Chris Henrich
"Try thinking of outrage as an addiction, and see if that helps."   -- Nancy
Lebowitz