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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,79bbf7e359159d0d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-09 11:22:09 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!freenix!isdnet!grolier!club-internet!not-for-mail From: Laurent Guerby Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: newbie can't get exceptions to work! Date: 09 Apr 2001 20:23:07 +0200 Organization: Club-Internet (France) Message-ID: <86u23yszjo.fsf@acm.org> References: <3ACDB29E.45B91316@earthlink.net> <9ao1if$cq9$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <3ACFC902.115624A1@mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nas24-195.vlt.club-internet.fr X-Trace: front1m.grolier.fr 986840373 480 195.36.223.195 (9 Apr 2001 18:19:33 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Apr 2001 18:19:33 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.5 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6670 Date: 2001-04-09T18:19:33+00:00 List-Id: Brian Rogoff writes: > On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Ted Dennison wrote: > > That being the case, you'd like to strive for readability, not tersenes. > > False dichotomy. In many cases, terse notation is more readable. > > Besides, I imagine English keywords, rather than French, German, Chinese, > or Hindi, were chosen for some reason. I hope you're not thinking terseness here, if you do a simple french translation of common english programming language keywords, you'll get the same length for most, may be one character more but that's all (begin => debut, end => fin, if => si, else => sinon, ...). The reason for the choice of english is probably due to the language being used to vehiculate scientific knowledge, and may be 7-bit ASCII only supporting english and not really well other european or non european languages. > Assume that there are far more programmers (C, C++, Java, ....) who > use a programming language with {} instead of begin-end nowadays, I > think it's a fairly obvious argument which suggests that today {} is > a readable choice based on the experience of readers. I think the {} vs begin/end issue being completly unsignificant vs, for example, brain damaged declarations, broken case statements, unambiguous and readable if/then/elsif/else/endif nesting, named and order free arguments and agregates, silly numerous levels of operator priority and operator character choice, conflict between those silly operators and template syntax in C++, idiotic comma operator, and in general hard to parse by simple technique syntax (ask C++ compiler writers). And I would absolute religious belief in keeping those historical mistakes around (see Java). If {} vs begin/end is issue for a new language, allow both and end of the story. PS: also, on a french keyboard, {} [] are a major pain to type ;-). -- Laurent Guerby