1 Sep
2017
1 Sep
'17
5:53 a.m.
On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 8:45 PM, Ian Zimmerman <itz(a)very.loosely.org> wrote:
On 2017-08-31 17:47, Larry McVoy wrote:
Today I might agree with you because of the fancy IDEs coupled with the
huge screen size makes this a little easier to read.
When I learned, screen space was at a premium (24x80) so I had to make
every line count and pack in as much as I could. And any short cut to
typing also helped me write things faster, so I gravitated to C as soon as
it was available at an affordable price... It also was easier to do via
dialup at 1200 or 2400 baud.
But then again, I still write in 'C' because I find it easiest to grok
after 35 years of use... I'm also teaching python to my son and haven't
introduced C and compilers and makefiles. python just runs and the
indenting thing, though it offends my aesthetic, isn't a big deal with a
decent editor.
Warner
IF (expr)
BEGIN
blah
blah
blah
END
I'm sorry but I'm with whoever it was that said { } are better than
BEGIN END. Seems trivial but it's not to me.
IMO, that's taking 1 part of a large coherent whole and judging by that.
I am terrible with metaphors and similes, but maybe a bit like saying "I
don't like the GPL because it restricts what I can do with my code."
Here's another construct from C:
for (i = n; i > 0; --i) {
blah();
}
In a language like Pascal (really Algol), that is
FOR i = n TO 0 DO
Blah()
DONE
That's much closer typing-wise, isn't it? That's because of the melding
of the brackets with the control structure keywords. But you can't do
that _and_ have braces.