On 2004-09-25 16:48, Larry Latour <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Scruffies miss the point. Languages are designed each within
> their own specific context of use. Pascal was specifically
> designed by Niklaus Wirth as a pedagogical language, C designed as
> a language to be used symbiotically with the implementation and
> use of Unix. Pascal was mean't primarily to allow students to
> explore the then hot paradigm of "structured programming", and C
> was designed for "scruffies".
While I agree that "scruffies miss the point" I'm wondering about the current
attitude towards scruffy and neat languages. When I was studying programming
at university we used first basic then pascal but we didn't really think they
were "real" programming languages. Instead real languages had to messy and if
something bad happened it was your responibility as a programmer to keep
track of those things (much like Green describes) and if you didn't you were
a bad programming. And if you could write something short and cryptic you
were a real hero (why if(x){y}else{z} when you could write x?y:z ???).
I have the feeling, but I could be wrong since I'm not in such close contact
with beginning students anymore, that the current students have a slightly
different attitude towards scruffiness/neatness.
> On your second point, it's true, some people DO enjoy writing and
> puzzling out the meaning of cryptic code. I recall an ancient
> series of running articles in CACM challenging readers to discover
> what a particularly cryptic piece of code does. As someone who
> teaches algorithms, I still enjoy discussing the meaning and
> validation of some well structured but complex algorithm,
> something like a Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm or a
> triangulation algorithm. But there is also the satisfaction of
> designing a textually "beautiful" algorithm that not only is easy
> to follow but looks organizationally pretty on a page (especially
> with the multi-colors used in most modern program editors).
Personally I never felt those C contests interesting (OK, the "code train" I
once saw was kind of nice) although I always liked writing compact code in C.
I've preferred writing slighty longer code that have been neat and easy to
read ... although I admit a certain fondness for Perl.
But once again I have the feeling that the attitude of beginning students
have changed here, but I don't know if it's just wishful thinking on my part.
So my question is basically: is the scruffy programmer the hero in the same
way now as we experienced them to be when I went to university (some 20 years
ago)
jem
--
Jan Erik Mostr�m www.mostrom.pp.se
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