Re: (rant) Three kinds of languages

• Posted by _tom (admin) Oct 26, 2017
• 1668 views

Bugs occur in software; we learn to be tolerant. Deliberate language design surprises do not deserve tolerance.

Surprise!

Two kinds of surprise:

• oopsie surprise...this is a bug
• design surprise...the language is wierd

oopsie surprise

The OE switch may crash under the interpreter but work correctly when compiled. This is a bug that must still be resolved. Most of the time switch works correctly.

This surprise is unintentional.

-- works in OE; used to crash Phix (now fixed) 
 
sequence s = {} 
 
for i=1 to length(s) do 
    ? s[i] 
    exit 
end for 
 
-- probably what most coders would have written 
if length(s) then ? s[1] end if 
 

The oopsie surprise is small, rare, and fixed.

design surprise

-- example one 
	 
def greet(): 
    print( "hello" ) 
 
x=1 
if x==1: 
	print( "it is one" ) 

This syntax is based on indentation. If you leave the colon : out you get an "invalid syntax" message; not very helpful. Why is a colon : needed? The colon is a superfluous syntax element. Not simple; not beginner friendly.

This surprise is deliberate.

-- example two 
function greet() 
    puts(1, "hello" ) 
end function 

This syntax uses keywords in the same way for all language elements. Simple.

-- example three 
function greet() puts(1, "hello" ) end function 

Since the keywords make the syntax work you can write code in any way. Still simple.

_tom