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: 103376,4961da398a273222 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-02-09 22:51:36 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: swrinde!gatech!newsfeed.pitt.edu!uunet!world!pang From: pang@world.std.com Subject: Re: Ada self-referential operators Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA References: <3gnkjb$gso@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 06:48:12 GMT Date: 1995-02-10T06:48:12+00:00 List-Id: In article , Brian Rogoff wrote: >John G. Volan writes: > I never cease to be amazed (and disgusted) at how enamored some people > in this industry seem to be about using arbitrary sequences of special > characters for just about everything under the sun. Who says it's > *desirable* to load up a language with a lot of cryptic > "mathematicalese"? Doesn't anyone remember how *hard* it was to learn > math, way back in grade school? > >In some problem domains it is very useful to have concise operators. >MATLAB, for example, even makes up new "YAFOs" to represent common >matrix manipulations. While I agree that overuse of special operators >could lead to highly unreadable code, tasteful use of such operators >makes reading math, and by extension, mathematical code, easier (IMO). >People could also choose bad names for functions and variables and make >code unreadable that way, yet I've never heard it suggested that we should >program in the untyped lambda calculus! the problem is the keyboard/ascii character set. it's not rich/expressive enough! what does it take to use symbol/graphics to represent operators and other language constructs/elements?