A question about certain language features
I've been reading the Euphoria documentation, and I have a
few questions about certain features of the language.
I assume that the author made certain choices because he
felt that this encouraged a better way of programming. I
don't want to start (or continue) an argument about this per
se, but I would like to try and understand the reasoning.
For instance, without debating their merit, I can understand
the author leaving out the goto statement, as abuse of goto
can lead to hard-to-read and hard-to-prove-correct code. Of
course, the converse is possibly true too.
The features I have questions about as to why there were
implemented that way are:
1) Variables can not be initialized when declared, but
rather, must be initialized via an assignment statement.
Based on other languages, this seems like one of those
convenience type issues. Is there some programming
philosophy that says that an initialization in a declaration
is a 'bad thing'? What is the 'bad thing'? I also note
that standard Pascal does not allow variables to be
initialized when they are declared.
2) No support of call by reference. I understand that call
by reference can lead to unexpected side-effects, but since
changing global variables in a subroutine seems to
essentially cause the same problem, I don't understand this
omission.
3) No support for local constants.
Again, I'm not trying to start a debate, I'm just trying to
understand why these features/omissions are desirable.
Thanks for any information!
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