Re: newbie can't get exceptions to work!

[Larry Hazel <lhazel@mindspring.com>]

Ayende Rahien wrote:
> 
> "Brian Rogoff" <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> wrote in message
> news:Pine.BSF.4.21.0104071403390.4484-100000@shell5.ba.best.com...
> > On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Robert A Duff wrote:
> > > Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> writes:
> > > > I tell you what, design this next language, and I'm on board.
> > >
> > > I think I'm competent to design the language.  What I don't know how to
> > > do is get people to use it.
> >
> > That's something of a crap shoot. Having a really good implementation
> helps.
> > I think a language targeted at systems programming (I assume you want to
> > design an Ada successor, not a high level language) that generated code
> > which is about as good as C code, has a decent chance of getting new fans.
> >
> > > I suspect that to make a *popular* language these days, you have to make
> > > it look like C (yuck),
> >
> > Python isn't popular? Visual Basic?
> >
> > I don't think you need to go quite as far as Cyclone. Dump "begin end" and
> > use "{ }". If you keep the procedure/function distinction, use shorter
> > names. Use [] for arrays. Use Pascal notation for pointers. Provide some
> > shortcut operators like C. Keep Ada's modes. OK, so the language may look
> > a bit different from Ada syntactically but I think it could stay in the
> > spirit of Ada semantically.
> 
> I agree with all of the above, while begin-end may improve visibility, no
> programming language has to consider non-programmers as a target audiance.
> So {} as block statement, as well as some of C's nicest syntax features,
> with all of Ada's safety behind it, you would have at least me as a fan.

I personally think {} should be removed from the character set, or at least
require a minimum of 5 keystrokes to get either.  And keep () for array
indices.  I have often used arrays as approximations of complex functions in the
early stages of development.  Then, when the real algorithm is programmed later,
nothing changes except the package containing the array/function.

Larry