Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free?

"toby" <toby@telegraphics.com.au>
4 Nov 2005 14:01:45 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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[2 earlier articles]
Re: Why context-free? nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (2005-10-13)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? toby@telegraphics.com.au (toby) (2005-11-01)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (2005-11-01)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? 148f3wg02@sneakemail.com (Karsten Nyblad) (2005-11-01)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2005-11-02)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? haberg@math.su.se (2005-11-02)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? toby@telegraphics.com.au (toby) (2005-11-04)
Re: language design, syntax extension, was Why context-free? owong@castortech.com (Oliver Wong) (2005-11-12)
Re: language design, syntax extension, was Why context-free? boldyrev+nospam@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru (Ivan Boldyrev) (2005-11-15)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? henry@spsystems.net (2005-11-26)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? haberg@math.su.se (2005-11-27)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? mpah@thegreen.co.uk (2005-12-08)
Re: syntax extension, was Why context-free? rfigura@erbse.azagtoth.de (Robert Figura) (2005-12-15)
[2 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: "toby" <toby@telegraphics.com.au>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 4 Nov 2005 14:01:45 -0500
Organization: http://groups.google.com
References: 05-10-05305-10-068 05-10-075 05-11-006 05-11-013
Keywords: design, comment
Posted-Date: 04 Nov 2005 14:01:45 EST

Nick Maclaren wrote:
> toby <toby@telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
> >But TeX (like METAFONT) is closely tailored to its domain, and within
> >that domain, is quite elegant. Of course it can be 'ghastly' for tasks
> >of a different character - Knuth himself gives several examples in The
> >TeXbook. Anything is *possible* but not necessarily easy.
>
> No, that wasn't my point. One of the "gotchas" is that spaces are
> syntactically significant, and you cannot introduce layout (ANY form
> of layout) for clarity without changing the meaning of the program.
> And, because TeX doesn't have a precise description (merely a guide on
> how to use it), it is very hard to analyse a program for why it
> doesn't do what you understand the TeX book to say that it should do.


I never found it particularly difficult. The TeXbook is superb
documentation, and for the truly desperate, there's the source. :-)


> >Similarly I find that many people who complain about Perl -
> >especially comparing it to languages such as Ruby or Python - have
> >missed the point. Perl has its sweet spot domains (as a child of sed,
> >C, sh, etc) and while it is a powerful general purpose programming
> >language, that was not its guiding principle. It was highly adapted
> >from birth.
>
> Again, you have missed the point. Perl is bad, even for the purposes
> that it was designed for and is most often used for - system scripts.


I disagree. At least you can admit it's no worse than bash.


> People who care about RAS really, really do NOT want a privileged
> script to do something unexpected. Humans make errors, but Perl is
> such that most errors make it do something unpredictable rather than
> issuing an error message.


I agree with that much.


> People may have heard before, but my first and last Perl program was
> 20 lines long, with every branch tested both for correctness of the
> condition and that each path was being correctly executed. It gave
> wrong answers the first time I used it.


Why should I accept your judgments of Perl then? Just asking. I would
not offer such criticisms of a language I'd only used once (and
incorrectly).


> I had misunderstood the manual, and typed completely broken syntax.
> This behaved as I expected during my tests and not on real data.


Why do you expect to get it right first time? One thing I have learned
about humans versus technology is that we are only truly proficient at
things we do every day; and that it takes 10 years to get good at
anything.


>
> Not really related to that, I also half converted it to MVS, ISO C
> and EBCDIC (don't ask), and so had to stufy its code. I have rarely
> seen anything so bad, and its quality made it very clear why it was
> likely to behave in that sort of way. I could go into details, but
> they are irrelevant. I have heard that newer versions are better,
> but my reaction is that they could scarcely fail to be.


It's clearly not for you. But there are plenty of wonderful languages
out there. Perl and TeX I consider to be domain specific, and therefore
perhaps prone to the learning-curve and fragility problems that you
encountered.


--Toby


>
> Regards,
> Nick Maclaren.
>
> [You keep mentioning your failure to write a correct perl program on
> the first try, but I can't figure out what conclusion we're supposed
> to draw. That someone who is a skilled programmer in some languages
> is still a novice in languages he doesn't know? That you aren't very
> good at learning languages from the manual? That preconceptions make
> it hard to learn new or different languages? I don't think my first
> perl program worked either, nor did my first Lisp, C, Basic, Algol 60,
> PL/I, Fortran, or Varian 620 assembler program, but I don't think it
> was the languages' fault. (Well, maybe for C.)
>
> Oh, by the way, I wrote a python program using my favorite text editor
> which has four character tab stops. It didn't work, so nobody should
> use python. -John]


Touché, John. At what point do your editorials become too long for
interjection and require participation as a civilian? :-)
[When they're longer than the original article, I guess.
This is veering away from compiler design into language design, so with
one more message in the queue I'm going to decree this thread to be over.
-John]


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