Re: Problem trying to implement generics.

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Robert A Duff wrote:
> Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> writes:
> 
> > How about just using the {} and having an optional } if; syntax? 
> 
> I suppose it's just a matter of taste, but I find "} if;" distasteful.

I was trying to capture the readability of the Ada end ...; constructions,
which I miss in other languages, with some suitability as a very
lightweight delimiter, useable even with inline function definitions. 
Could be an overconstrained problem.

> > > And probably the {...} syntax couldn't have other control structures
> > > nested inside it -- it's only allowed for the innermost thing.
> > > 
> > > Good idea?
> > 
> > I don't like it. 
> 
> Why?

I generally don't like fairly arbitrary restrictions like that one. Why
not allow nesting {}? I have philosophically similar objections to
automatically "use"ing infix operators. I prefer to handle operators like 
other functions. 

> > > Oh, and I'd like my editor to automatically convert from one to the
> > > other as "..." grows or shrinks.
> > 
> > At this point, I say adopt indentation for block structure. 
> 
> But indentation only marks the *beginning* of the thing.
> 
> > Funny you mentioned that, I've started using LaTeX again. Sometimes the
> > old ways are better :-).
> 
> It amazes me that Knuth, who is orders of magnitude smarter than me, can
> design such an awful language.

Language design is a skill, and just becuase someone excels in some subset
of talents doesn't necessarily mean they are skilled everywhere. Remember, 
Knuth still uses a mock assembly language to describe algorithms in this 
books. Yuck!

I agree TeX and LaTeX suck as languages, but the TeX program is very cool
and I really prefer it to may of the WYSIWYG tools I suffered through
before my return to the LaTeX fold. 

> Writing TeX is like writing an
> assembly-language program to generate a document.  Except TeX is more
> error-prone than most assembly languages.  LaTeX is like programming in
> a *macro* assembly language, which has some advantages, but causes all
> error messages to be totally incomprehensible.

That's all true, and I'd probably use Lout but for all of the other
reasons we use a piece of software. Besides, I much prefer it to the
commercial offerings. 

-- Brian