Re: Clause "with and use"

["Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net>]

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"Russ" <18k11tm001@sneakemail.com> wrote in message
news:bebbba07.0311051910.4913df78@posting.google.com...
> Mark Lorenzen <mark.lorenzen@ofir.dk> wrote in message
news:<m365hyh65o.fsf@niflheim.malonet>...
> > 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) writes:
> >
> > [cut]
> >
> Oh, so x += 2 is "unreadable", eh? Do you have any idea what that says
> about your intelligence? You might as well just blurt out, "I'm an
> idiot".

*** Don't you think that's pushing it?  You're right, 4 out 5 languages do
have the += or some form of it.  Which proves the old saying "Sometimes, the
majority means that all the fools are on the same side".

*** When this concept of += like operators came out, it wasn't designed to
be readable, but merely quicker to type, a simple programmer's convenience
(dare I say Author's convenience as readability was not in it's job
description.  performance wise, recently I haven't tested it, but not all
that long ago, x+=2 and x=x+2 produced the exact same bytecode so it wasn't
designed for being faster than the regular x=x+2. Maybe that changed today
(maybe a little while back too) but not at it's creation...

*** Look at a bit of history, when we say C/C++ became popular for the wrong
reasons, language rich features capacities, even performances were not even
considered when selecting C or C++ as the language.  Like I said elsewhere
it was all based on a "monkey see monkey do" concept.  "Hey we'll use C++
because this and/or that company is using it.  You call that research to
back up their decisions? I beg to differ.  I'm not taking anything out of C
and C++ (well maybe a bit out of C++, it's the most technological patch work
I've ever seen and since it was the only thing available to upgrade C from
it got to be standard, again read the history).  But C and C++ do have their
role in the programming world, the problems started when they tried to bring
these two out of their intended domains and out in the open as a general
purpose language thinking that "hey, if it can do low level OS operations it
can do the rest.  In a way it can, however that's when the patch work
started.

>
> I hope you are near the end of your career too, because otherwise you
> have a tough row to hoe, considering that the four or five most
> popular general-purpose programming languages consider "+=" standard.
> Or do you expect to use Ada for the rest of your career? Good luck.
>
*** And you expect to use C++ for the rest of yours?  Like I mentionned, all
the wrong reasons went into making C/C++ "the language" it's starting to
show, companies are starting to realize that certain decisions were perhaps
not reflected upon way back when.  For the sames reasons C went out of it's
intended usage into the general purpose field, so did Ada, Pascal, and I
could just keep on naming languages here, they all did it for the same
reasons, to stay alive so to speak.  How ever the others were already
"general purpose" languages, so they're next logical step was Low level
system access and compete with C.

> Folks, if you don't like my attitude, I really don't give a flying you
> know what. Quit making assinine assertions in reply to my posts, and
> I'll quit calling you on them.

*** It's not a question of attitude per se, everyone's entitled to his or
her own attitude, part of our individuality.  The problem is in your
prejudice against anyone who doesn't agree with you.  As programmers and
software engineers, we're all entitled to select the best tool for the job
at hand, and I've seen first hand reasons why C/C++ should not have been
picked for select given jobs.  It's ok to say C/C++ is good, it's not ok to
say that everything else is crap.  Much as you'd like to believe it, C and
C++ are not "THE" languages to use and everything else and fisher price
programming.  Many times I've seen programmers start to develop something in
C or C++ and quit during the debugging session cause they thought they'd
never see the end of it.  C and C++, like all other languages, have to stop
believing their own press so to speak and start evolving, and I dont mean
into C# either, that would be going backwords in my book.

*** Take a look at the D language, it looks alot like C/C++ but at least
it's got measures and grammar elements to protect it from itself like
conditions to be met prior to calling a sub routine expressed in some form
of contract between the caller and the callee  just that is a big step in
the right direction. and I'm sorry to say that C and C++ are not the ones
that took that big step (at least not the first ones).  But that's the kind
of things C and C++ needs to broaden it's horizons.

*** And no I don't think you're an idiot because of what you believe, it's
your choice, as it is ours to choose the language we want.

"It's not the language you use that makes you the programmer you are, it's
how you use it".

-- 
St�phane Richard
"Ada World" Webmaster
http://www.adaworld.com