1. Re: A rant on an Ideal languages Was: Re: RNG Test: Code to
Regarding non-frustrating programming languages:
I have a habit of being overly critical. Here, I intend to be funny in a
critical way. This is a disclaimer, if anything here offends you, then it
was meant as a joke, no doubt.
On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Joel Crook wrote:
> We could all laugh out loud at the foolish guy who tries to answer this
> question. Ok I'll play the fool.
And I'll laugh.
> Let's take Euphoria as a starting point.
>
> I want a language to write like I am instructing the machine how to do what I
> want it to do.
How about assembly?
> Shorthand is ok but cryptic is not.
>
> I like the idea of :
>
> writeln(file1, "This is part of a test file entry")
>
> and the program writes the string: "This is part of a test file entry" into
> the
> text file with the \n \c
>
> already appended, and if I say
> write(file1, "This is part of a test file entry")
>
> it writes to the file without the linefeed and carrage return characters
Pascal, much?
> or
>
> write("Hello world" ) and it writes "hello world" to the
> screen
Structure alert! This won't parse in *ANY* language I know of.
> Ok so that's pretty much pascal conventions.
Pascal does that? Oy... now I know why I stopped.
> "puts" to me seems like a goyim spelling of putz and makes as much
> sense.
PUT String, perhaps?
> C is a great language but it fails as much as it succeeds because the
> programmer is forced to begin to think like the compiler rather that the
> compiler helping the programmer to "execute" the programmer's ideas
Actually, some of us like being in that zen state where there are
only two things: code and desire. The desire shapes the code. The words in
the code do not exist. The body of the coder does not exist. Nor does the
keyboard, the monitor, even the text editor does not exist. This usually
happens at 4 or 5 am. (Now that you're all laughing at ME...)
> The types in U4 are fine and it has type creation extensibility this is good!
> But type declaration is odd and at times down right strange. I was originally
> left with the impression that type declaration in u4 were not required and
> types could be thown around at will -- not so. Hmmm. Gotta be the User! (HEY
> THATS'S ME!)
Wow, that _is_ you. What's wrong with type declaration? What would
you like to see?
> Support for 32 bit logical operators would be nice... Hey if I'm going to
> have
> to rewrite C functions into Euphoric-C the least I need is to have the same
> base types of operators
Oooh, right where it hurts. Good point.
> I LIKE n dimensional arrays. Having to build sequences of sequences of
> sequences.... of sequences and then having to figure out how to insert data
> into them makes my foolish head hurt.
This is either easy or it works well. It happens to work well. I
hate this aspect too, but, you'd be begging for this method if you had to
do it in assembly.
> While we're at it let's throw OOP on the fire as well. Ever found an EASY OOP
> language? Ever found OOP useful? What about Visual Interface coding? Yikes!
> not
> fun at all!
OOP is pesky. I personally believe that it's intended for some and
not others. Personally, I can (and do often) use OOP, but I sleep at night
knowing that I can do without. Therefore, this is a point I refuse to make
fun of =)
> How about Code re-useability? forget it!!!! Originally that was the idea
> behind
> DLLs. Tell me how many times have you created dlls from scratch? How many
> times
> have you used SOMEBODY elses dll?
Zero, Zero. I don't code for windows. =)
> I like the togetherness of the u4 community and the helpfulness. The
> documentation is good but not having a written user guide is less that
> helpful.
Yep, this community is pretty good. Despite the spats I've seen.
I'd like to see ALL documentation in the form of man pages. Not just of
u4, but for my VCR, everything. 'man VCR'. I've gotten so used to the man
pages that I can digest them in seconds.
> The problem I seem to see most often is folks making things too complex just
> for the sake of being complex. Why should a programming language HAVE to look
> esoteric? Darned if I know.
That's where the magic comes in. How do you think computers work?
Magic silly! You have to cast SPELLS to make it go...
> Personal opinion: Programing languages should assist in solving problems and
> not creat new ones.
Most try to. It's not like they can be sentient. So there's a
limit to how well they can work in this regard. Euphoria fits on a floppy.
Three times. WOW. Frankly I'm suprised it can do what it does.
> Ok so remember I warned you all I was playing the fool here! Be gentle when
> you
> beat me up! 
Too easy ;)
That went better than I thought... just trying to lighten things up some.
