Re: Featuritis not always bad (was re: GOTO considered necessary)

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

<<Which is no problem if the feature:
1) is well designed and well behaved, so no tail biting
2) comes as a independant feature, so that people can work with the rest
of the language without ever knowing that the feature existed. This
ensures that people can write in the language safely if they have not
finished the full language course: avoid steep learning curve and memory
load.
3) comes as a clearly recognisable syntactic entity in the language. So
if one reads the code and is not familiar with the feature one at least
knows that there is a cognitive problem, and knows where to look in the
reference manual (and find there many useful informations on the feature
that would find no place if the feature was to be simulated with lower
level constructs)
??


This is *precisely what I disagree with. The trouble is that you don't
know you don't need to know something until you know it, and then it's
too late! 

Yes, of coruse it is the case that adding features to a language, and
thus increasing the complexity of the language may easily be counterbalanced
by the resulting simplification in programs. That's exactly the tradeoff
that needs to be considered.