Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages

On Thursday 07 Jun 2012 at 18:21, "Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson"
<johann@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> Another point to make. Why do we assign from right to left? Is it in
> any way natural? What's wrong with
>
> a + b --> c "a plus b assigned to c"
>
> instead of
>
> c <-- a + b "c becomes a + b?"
>
> The more I think about it, I believe the former construct is a bit more
> natural since we read from left to right. However, I'd want to see or
> work on a non-trivial project in such a language to make up my mind.


It sounds like you want COBOL, which has:


MOVE A TO B


ADD A TO B GIVING C


Or, if you want it the other way around:


COMPUTE C = A + B


You can also say:


ADD A TO B


which puts the result in B. On the other hand:


MULTIPLY A BY B


puts the result in A!


Then there's:


DIVIDE A BY B


(or is it "DIVIDE A INTO B"?)


My point is that by trying to be more "natural" and follow
English language rules, rather than a concise and consistent
set of rules, COBOL ends up with something verbose
and inconsistent.


--
Martin


STRL Reader in Software Engineering and Royal Society Industry Fellow
martin@gkc.org.uk http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/ Erdos number: 4
G.K.Chesterton web site: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/
Mirrors: http://www.gkc.org.uk and http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc

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