From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_MUA_MOZILLA autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c733905936c6b6b0 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.129.169 with SMTP id nx9mr9908638pbb.2.1334588506672; Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:01:46 -0700 (PDT) Path: r9ni63174pbh.0!nntp.google.com!news1.google.com!news3.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder2-2.proxad.net!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool4.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:01:05 +0200 From: Georg Bauhaus User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120327 Thunderbird/11.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: [OT] interesting reason why a language is considered good References: <8603135.951.1334573001928.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbbdy9> <4f8c06f5$0$7617$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> <14veb9cpamoda.ck9fbsd5m9m$.dlg@40tude.net> In-Reply-To: <14veb9cpamoda.ck9fbsd5m9m$.dlg@40tude.net> Message-ID: <4f8c3431$0$7627$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> Organization: Arcor NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Apr 2012 17:01:05 CEST NNTP-Posting-Host: 9ce3d062.newsspool1.arcor-online.net X-Trace: DXC=HbEjHoaWQ7JFJ3]dH>I?oEic==]BZ:afN4Fo<]lROoRA<`=YMgDjhgB37^C65XD;UEnc\616M64>JLh>_cHTX3jMRPR;5^BH3BF X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@arcor.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: 2012-04-16T17:01:05+02:00 List-Id: On 16.04.12 15:06, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > On Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:48:04 +0200, Georg Bauhaus wrote: > >> On 16.04.12 12:43, Marius Amado-Alves wrote: >>> Love OT threads in this clever forum:-) >>> >>> Actually there is a bit of thruth in the absurd no keyword thing: >>> *many* keywords can get in the way of naming identifiers. Ada, for one, >>> has a bit too many keywords, with some good identifier candidates (when, >>> others...) >> >> "when" and "others" are general abstractions. What kind >> of programs will in effect be about general abstractions? > > The kind of programs in Ada language, which uses exactly these words. And these are? (If you could avoid the tautological void. Be constructive! ;-) > Your > argument is bogus. If a reserved word is good for the language then it is > good for a program in that language. If a reserved word is good for the language, then it is a general abstraction, such as "when", or "others", because is it applicable to all kinds of programs regardless of concrete notions. The word "Morning" or "brothers" are not applicable to all kinds of programs because they are very unlike "when" or "others". I bet the former words are not reserved by any programming language. Amado-Alves claimed that "when" and "others" show that the number of reserved words in Ada is too large, because they are good candidates for identifiers. I still only see the same claim repeated, but not substantiated, and compared on a scale of "understandability". > Furthermore if "when" is bad, then "what", "who" etc should be too. Yet, > they are not reserved. More often than I like, I translate programs that use overly general identifiers, words that can only be understood after an inordinate amount of study. "What" as an identifier shouldn't be, IMHO, reserved or not, so words like "what" not being reserved does not count as counter-argument in my book. I'd rather have a list of words not recommended to augment reserved words. > The purpose of words being reserved has nothing to do with words. It does > 1) with readability, to clearly separate identifiers from other syntactic > tokens in order to improve readability. > > The reason #1 does not stand anymore because programs are read in IDEs. I disagree strongly, likely because IDEs usually become only DEs for heterogeneous sources in my real world: IDEs typically lack reliable means of automatically mapping (possibly broken) source to and from foreign layout, but layout becomes essential if syntax is abandoned for readability. Moreover, I happen to work in an environment that requires the use of editors (and terminals) that happen to be available with a given foreign system. My work can become rather difficult when programmers have relied on "graphical" or "typographical" properties of some IDE, and not plain old syntax.