begin quoting David Brown as of Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 12:18:09AM -0800: [snip] > Personally, I think the borrowed C syntax is what I like least about either > language. I also think it largely responsible for the success, especially > of Java. An experienced C or C++ programmer looks at Java and sees a > superficial resemblance. Once they've dived into the language, they > realize it is a completely different beast, but then they've already > learned enough to keep going. Other languages that have tried to do new > paradigms have had different enough syntax that it kept people away.
It all goes back to Algol, surely. > Syntax is the most visible, and most superficial aspect of the language. > With ocaml, one person got so annoyed at the syntax, that he wrote his own > front end for the language. For a while, many other people were writing > code in this revised syntax of the language. I'm not sure this is a good > thing. I just gave up at looking at OCaml. I looked, said "Oh, God!", kept looking, and eventually gave up. > Some languages allow the syntax of the language to be extended somewhat > (usually adding arbitrary operators). I haven't found this to make for > very readable code, though. That's the basis for Forth and TCL, isn't it? :) -- My little RPN language had just two operations at first Do Nothing and Define; I was so happy I almost burst. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
