"H. S. Teoh" <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message news:mailman.492.1329503475.20196.digitalmar...@puremagic.com... > > That's not 100% true, though. Programming has always had close ties with > math, even though, as you said, they aren't the same thing. In fact, > computing came out of math, if you want to be historically accurate. I > mean, the symbols chosen do have *some* ties with other domains, even if > the mapping is not 1-to-1. If it were truly completely arbitrary, why > don't we use $ for assignment, ` for equality, and % for addition? After > all, we're writing a programming language, not math, so we can just > assign arbitrary symbols to mean whatever we want, right? > > And as for C syntax, I have to admit that I'm most comfortable with C > (or C-like) syntax, too. Even though it has its own flaws, I have become > accustomed to its quirks, and I spontaneously type C syntax when I think > of code. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't step back and re-examine the > system to see if there are better ways of doing things. I find Pascal > syntax, for example, truly painful. But if I were to disregard my > background in C (and its derivatives), perhaps there is something to be > learned from Pascal syntax. >
I do agree with all of this, FWIW.
