Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> writes: > On Sat, 21 Aug 2021 17:15:14 -0300, Hope Rouselle <hrouse...@jevedi.com> > declaimed the following: > >>write some PHP precisely because it looked so much more cryptic than >>Allaire ColdFusion. Then C looked even more cryptic, so I fell in love >>with C. >> > Try APL then...
Lol. If the code below is APL, then thanks, but no, thanks. :-) We change over the years. These days I'm more or less obsessed with clarity. For instance, I'm a lot into literate programming Knuth-style. I have a certain distaste for syntax too. For instance, I would much rather write and read ``first(ls)'' than ``ls[0]''. I can't see too much advantage in using more syntax for something that procedures could do. But, of course, in certain contexts it might be better to write ls[0] or something like that. In these cases, the writer could then make the case and then define the new syntax, so I do think that writers should have the power to change syntax. I'm well aware of the double-edged sword this is. (Incidentally, yesterday I was happily reading a Python programmer talking about [1] how Dijkstra got it right for suggesting we shouldn't be using goto. Knuth had the opinion that it'd be a shame to remove goto, even though, of course, he'd agree that people should learn how to use it.) Is syntax the same thing as goto? I'm not sure. If it is, then I am like Knuth --- I feel sad when languages remove my ability to change syntax. But surely I feel overwhelmed sometimes when there's too much syntax created by the programmer who wrote the library that I'm trying to understand. (*) Footnotes [1] Notes on structured concurrency https://vorpus.org/blog/notes-on-structured-concurrency-or-go-statement-considered-harmful > (I suspect this will get garbaged in processing...) > > 4 5 ? 20 ? 52 > > (it did... the first ? [in my display] is Greek lower case rho, the second > question mark is... a question mark). Like you, I see two question marks. > 4 5 $RHO 20 ? 52 > > Generate 20 random numbers in the range 1..52, no duplicates, reshape > the vector into a 4x5 matrix. > > That just "dealt" four poker hands (needs logic to translate integer > 1..52 into suit/rank). That's wild. :-) Was this created by Brian Kernighan? It's hard to believe. Oh, I think he wrote AMPL, wasn't it? A Mathematical Programming Language, or something like that. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
