On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 05:21:54PM +0100, Tony Finch wrote:
> I was recently reading this paper
> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/PDF/SevenDeadlySins.pdf
> which has a few good points, but in one respect is seriously misguided. It
> proposes that introductory programming languages should use less confusing
> symbols, such as U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN instead of * and U+2190 LEFT
> ARROW for assignment. Never mind the fact that it's a struggle to even
> type the things, and that it's missing an opportunity to teach the poor
> dears about the arbitrariness and generally bad design of programming
> languages.
Perhaps Damian owns shares in a company making APL keyboards :-)
--
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information
[OS X] appeals to me as a monk, a user, a compiler-of-apps, a
sometime coder, and an easily amused primate with a penchant
for those that are pretty, colorful, and make nice noises.
-- Dan Birchall, in The Monastery
