OpenEuphoria

Re: Changes to Euphoria

• Posted by CChris <christian.cuvier at agricu?ture.gouv.?r> May 30, 2008
• 740 views

ken mortenson wrote:
> 
> CChris wrote:
> 
> > Frankly, your approach reminds me of Fortran (any flavour). 
> 
> Wow.  That's not a response I expected.  Although defining 5=6 in Fortran
> did make for interesting debug sessions with friends.
> 

Interesting...

> > Its superiority in some specific areas of programming has survived
> > programming
> > concepts and hardware changes. Fortran compilers have been the first to
> > introduce
> > some advanced features like statistical reshuffling of code to optimise its
> > speed, etc.
> > 
> > Great and granted.
>  
> > So you'd get the do i=1,n,step ... end loop, the arithmetic 3 way if and a
> > few
> > other minimalist thingies.
> 
> I believe you are confusing terse syntax with minimalism (you are free to
> disagree, my opinions and assertions are just vibrations in the wind.)
> 

How do you get minimalism in a language without terse syntax, and many lines to
implement the simplest construct?
Admittedly, a language may have terse syntax while not being minimalistic - I
thin to APL.

You'll admit the border area is quie blurred, unless you have precise
definitions, which it would help to state explicitly.

> > But if I found Fortran comfortable to program with, I'd use Fortran, nand I
> > don't. I even downloaded OpenWatcom F77 compiler, just to try my hand. Good
> > for stuff where speed is more importan than maintainability. But I'd say
> > hardly
> > better.
> > 
> > CChris
> 
> Chris, with all due respect (this is not presymbolic language folks, when I
> say with respect it has profound meaning to me) I believe you've just set
> up a straw man argument.
> 
> 1) Only fools would program in FORTRAN these days.
> 2) Ken's ideas are just repackaged FORTRAN.
> 3) Ken is a fool.
> 
> Thanks for playing.
> 
> Am I being unfair in my assessment?

Not unfair, but quite off the spot.

My thoughts are more along this:
1/ Only speed freaks, or people who need the speed for specific applications,
program in Fortran today, in spite of its being much harder to maintain. And they
are by no means fools, since they are able to maintain that.
2/ Ken has been/is/was closr to this school of programming
3/ Ken's experience is different from mine, and from most Eu users' as well.
Even though my programming experience is probably quite different from most Eu
users' as well.

CChris