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 13:52:07 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!feed.textport.net!newsranger.com!www.newsranger.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Ted Dennison Sender: usenet@www.newsranger.com References: <3ACDB29E.45B91316@earthlink.net> <9ao1if$cq9$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <3ACFC902.115624A1@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: newbie can't get exceptions to work! Message-ID: Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 20:49:10 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.208.22.130 X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsranger.com X-Trace: www.newsranger.com 986849350 209.208.22.130 (Mon, 09 Apr 2001 16:49:10 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 16:49:10 EDT Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6674 Date: 2001-04-09T20:49:10+00:00 List-Id: In article , Brian Rogoff says... > >On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Ted Dennison wrote: >False dichotomy. In many cases, terse notation is more readable. I didn't say there was a dichotomy, just that terse notation is not the goal, and thus can't be put forth as a good unto itself, when weighed against other factors. >Besides, I imagine English keywords, rather than French, German, Chinese, >or Hindi, were chosen for some reason. Assume that there are far more I'd say that if the Hindi words for "begin" and "end" were used, it would still be a better choice than using a single, practicly 1-dimensional character. >> Curly-braces look quite a bit like parens at first glance (and sometimes upon >> further glances too, depending on the font). Being a single chararacter, they >> are fairly easy to miss with the eye, and are harder for the eye to properly >> line up with distant lines (thus perhaps cause misapprehension of the proper >> nesting level). In fact, the impression of pointing in a certian direction >> causes a mild optical illusion which worsens the problem. Being mostly vertical, >> they can also get accidentally hidden behind the mouse pointer or an insertion >> cursor. >I've never had these problems, in many years of C, C++, and Java programming. I've had every single one of them. The problems lining begin-end blocks up is particularly nasty when trying to understand someone else's code heavily indented code, especially those who use less than 3 spaces for indentation. >I have had the problem of not being able to pick out arrays easily in the >code of Ada since nothing really stands out in Ada. A good syntax should >make different things look different. Why do you *need* to pick out arrays? I'd say that a good syntax should *not* point out differences that are of no consequence to the user. Another good example of this principle is the use of dot-notation syntax. In Ada MyObject.Field could refer to: o A record object with a field named "Field". o A pointer that is being dereferenced, which points to the above. o An object named Field in the package MyObject. o A routine named Field in the package MyObject. These are all quite different things underneath the scenes, but as long as they return a value of the correct type the user doesn't really care about that. That's good for me as a reader, because that hides detail that I don't really care about in trying to figure out the code in which it appears. If I start to worry about how MyObject.Field gets its value, *then* I'll go track down its definition. I take it you don't like this either? >More BS. Arrays and strings are data, not functions. Ahhh, now we are getting into software metaphisics. At a low level, its all just bits. But we don't (often) read the code in binary. At an equally silly high-level, we've got this "black box" program. Somewhere in the middle, we have concepts like "arrays" and "functions". As our high-level language source code representation is somewhere in the middle, there is going to be a certain amount of abstraction. It sounds like you just like a smidge less abstraction in your source code than I do. As a matter of taste, that's fair enough. But I wouldn't try to claim that its somehow better that way. That would be fighting history. >My recollection is that the last time this was discussed Robert Dewar >confirmed the statement that there was no discussion of using [] as array >brackets at all, the choice of () had to do with the DoD requirements on >the character set to support (now) obsolete machines. All of this singing That does seem to sound a bit familiar. Still, every now and then the bread lands jelly-side-up. :-) --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com