On 6/27/07, Stewart Stremler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
begin quoting Christopher Smith as of Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 01:19:31PM -0700: > On Jun 27, 2007, at 12:15 PM, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > >begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 01:16:51AM > >-0700: > >>A neat example is to compare quicksort in haskell: > >> > >>quicksort :: (Ord a) => [a] -> [a] > >>quicksort [] = [] > >>quicksort (p:xs) = quicksort [ x | x <- xs, x <= p ] ++ [ p ] ++ > >> quicksort [ x | x <- xs, x > p ] > > > >Unexpected truncation? > [snip]
>Plus, it needs comments. > > I disagree here. You need to know the language to interpret it, but > even without that, if you have a familiarity with the quicksort > algorithm, it is very easy to see what is happening here. And _that's_ one of the reasons I would stay the hell away from such languages -- it's not about the language, so much as it is about the arrogance of the adherents. There are some communities I do not wish to be a part of.
I agree with Chris here. It is not arrogance to expect someone reading a language to understand the language. After all would you criticize a poem written in Spanish because it was not cluttered with English documentation. I find that documentation often adds "clutter" to the visual aspects of a program. I despise that kind of documentation, which IMNSHO actually makes a program harder to understand. It seems that you are demanding that "I should be able to glance at code written in a language I do not know and immediately understand it." Your attitude is the one that I find arrogant. Learn the language first then render an opinion on a style. BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
