Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support

On 12/04/2018 11:51, bartc wrote:


> [Python certainly has a lot of theology.  I believe that python users
> would say that your misssing features are implemented through simple
> idioms and aren't worth gunking up the languages, e.g. repeat N times
> is "for i in range(N):".  But like I said, it's theology. -John]


(Just on that point, that is one of the simpler features and it is just
neater syntax for something that can be expressed in other ways.


But it is not adding extra syntax; if anything it is getting rid of it!
If a for-loop starts like this:


          for i:=1 to n do ...


Then by leaving out the bits not needed you end up with this:


          to n do ...


A repeat-n-times loop (one that doesn't have to maintain an explicit
loop counter accessible as a reference-counted variable from the source
code). And an endless loop by leaving 'to n'. (This comes from Algol-68
actually; not my idea.)


But even if extra syntax is needed, so what? Syntax is free, provided
you don't go mad with it. Compare with the type system and libraries for
which no such curbs appear to exist)


--
bartc
[Syntax is free in the compiler but not necessarily in the brains of
the programmers. Back when I was writing PL/I programs, people said
my code was unreadable because I'd learned PL/I from the reference
manual, while everyone else learned it from books like "PL/I for
Fortran progammers" or "PL/I for commercial programmers." My code
used what seemed reasonable to me but others found it a mishmosh of
stuff they knew and stuff they didn't. -John]

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