Re: OT: Language Design
On Thu, 27 May 2004 18:27:21 -0700, Derek Parnell
<guest at RapidEuphoria.com> wrote:
>This is a quote I can relate to...
>
>"There is one thing more important than brevity to a hacker: being able
>to do what you want.
For a half decent programmer, true.
>In the history of programming languages a
>surprising amount of effort has gone into preventing programmers from
>doing things considered to be improper.
True, and for a damn good reason (see below)
>This is a dangerously resumptuous plan.
Nonsense.
>How can the language designer know what the
>programmer is going to need to do?
There is nothing wrong with letting those programmers who know full
well what they are doing from resorting (eg) to machine code, agreed.
>I think language designers would do
>better to consider their target user to be a genius who will need to do
>things they never anticipated, rather than a bumbler who needs to be
>protected from himself. The bumbler will shoot himself in the foot
>anyway. You may save him from referring to variables in another package,
>but you can't save him from writing a badly designed program to solve
>the wrong problem, and taking forever to do it."
Utter tosh (at the language design level). We need (and lets be honest
here, a few wasted cycles in the name of easing the process *IS* the
holy grail) to encourage people to "have a go", not tell them they are
shit.
If your "target user" is indeed a genius, the fucker (scuse my french)
will be coding in hex/binary anyway, no "language" needed.
Derek, I don't understand why on earth you regurgitated this trash; it
goes against everything you have previously said.
Flexibility is one thing, no protection whatsoever is another.
Pete
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