"Frank Wills" <fdwills@sandarh.com> wrote in message news:bgmbtr$2c97$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> Frank Wills wrote:
> > I've been using C/C++ since around '84. Anything that kind of like C/C++ is out of my comfort zone, except assembly, which I like, but don't need so much.
> correction: Anything that _isn't_ kind of like C/C++ is out of my comfort zone.

I'm with you there. I've used it so much it is just second nature to me. Looking at pascal syntax just sets my teeth on edge <g>.

Walter wrote:
> "Frank Wills" <fdwills@sandarh.com> wrote in message
> news:bgmbtr$2c97$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
> I'm with you there. I've used it so much it is just second nature to me.
> Looking at pascal syntax just sets my teeth on edge <g>.
> 
> 
Yeah, I was a real Pascal hater, which we had to use
for all of our college lab assignments. I was also a
self-appointed C evangelist, which they weren't yet
offering as a course.

You certainly had to type a lot more in Pascal/Delphi to get the same thing to happen.

I don't see how anybody can think begin/end is more "readable" than { / }. It's certainly less writable!!

Yes, a = succ(a) certainly seems less readable than a++.  (slightly
different semantics though).  In Delphi you can't put assignments anywhere
in an expression, they have to be their own statement.

I like syntactical shortcuts, so long as they don't cause ambiguity.  If you can replace a symbol/keyword with a shorter one and maintain everything else being equal I'd rather them be shorter.  I can use the saved keystrokes to make my identifiers longer.  ;)

Sean

"Mike Wynn" <mike.wynn@l8night.co.uk> wrote in message news:bgls6m$1sq6$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> > Besides, i have discovered Sather, which has a syntax i like, as well as a sane semantics, which is gorgeous. :) It has not only much more theoretical beauty, it feels also very simple, natural and convenient, without sharp corners.
>
> I looked through the Sather docs sometime back, and although I do argee
with
> you view on Sather to me it suffers from the fault as Delphi ... great features, 90% of the syntax is good but lack the symbolic short cuts and
has
> different use of ';'
> I like the C `if`  (prefer the perl `if <bool><block>[<elseif/else>]`|
> <statement> if <bool> )
> I always got driven mad by if <bool> then <stat> else <stat> ';'
> and resorted to begin and end with every if delphi code.
>
> don't you miss a++ and b += foo; etc ?

"Frank Wills" <fdwills@sandarh.com> wrote in message news:bgnsb4$pgl$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Walter wrote:
> > "Frank Wills" <fdwills@sandarh.com> wrote in message
> > news:bgmbtr$2c97$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> > I'm with you there. I've used it so much it is just second nature to me.
> > Looking at pascal syntax just sets my teeth on edge <g>.
> Yeah, I was a real Pascal hater, which we had to use
> for all of our college lab assignments. I was also a
> self-appointed C evangelist, which they weren't yet
> offering as a course.

I wrote several pascal programs long ago. Most of the programming time was spent *fighting* the compiler, as it thwarted me at every turn. It was so bad I was turning to using assembly language. Then I chanced on a copy of K+R, and it was like a breath of fresh air. No longer was I fighting the compiler, as the language allowed me to do what I wanted.

I also simply liked the terseness of C. When you write a lot of code, the long wordy keywords of Pascal just get annoying.

Walter wrote:

> I wrote several pascal programs long ago. Most of the programming time was
> spent *fighting* the compiler, as it thwarted me at every turn. It was so
> bad I was turning to using assembly language. Then I chanced on a copy of
> K+R, and it was like a breath of fresh air. No longer was I fighting the
> compiler, as the language allowed me to do what I wanted.

You had a wrong compiler. :) Nowadays they don't have these problems.

> I also simply liked the terseness of C. When you write a lot of code, the
> long wordy keywords of Pascal just get annoying.

No they don't!

-i.

Sean L. Palmer wrote:
> You certainly had to type a lot more in Pascal/Delphi to get the same
> thing to happen.

Not really. Because most of function calls in C++ would be replaced by
property assignments and reads in Delphi. None of these ugly () midst in
expressions, which already have enough of parenthesis.

But well... the library wasn't that advanced, and the lack of templates
caused conceptually more typing, that's true. Not syntax.

> I don't see how anybody can think begin/end is more "readable" than {
> / }. It's certainly less writable!!

/methinks begin...end is cool. Readable and writable. I have a hard time
stretching my fingers to get shift, ctrl, and alt right, to type in
these special symbols! while hatural keywords are very fast and
strain-free to type.

> Yes, a = succ(a) certainly seems less readable than a++.  (slightly different semantics though).  In Delphi you can't put assignments
> anywhere in an expression, they have to be their own statement.

Who uses succ sux! The right way is "Inc (a);"!!!

> I like syntactical shortcuts, so long as they don't cause ambiguity.
> If you can replace a symbol/keyword with a shorter one and maintain
> everything else being equal I'd rather them be shorter.  I can use
> the saved keystrokes to make my identifiers longer.  ;)

Short keywords are good, as long as they are used vey often. Nothing
against "bool", "int", ...

-i.

"Ilya Minkov" <midiclub@8ung.at> wrote in message news:bgp2e4$1vin$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> > I also simply liked the terseness of C. When you write a lot of code,
the
> > long wordy keywords of Pascal just get annoying.
>
> No they don't!
>
Yes they do!! 6 months of Delphi was enough for me,

I think it is very much personal taste, having had to write in C, C++, Java,
Delphi, Perl and PHP all sections of the same project often all in the same
day, and with some code having to be ported from one lang to another, you
start to develope strong personal preferences over how to do things.
personally I lean towards the Java way for most stuff, it have the shortcuts
and it defines the order of eval of params to functions.
delphi as I remember will not allow you to write
if  i := func( foo ) then .... ;
in Java you can write i = ar[idx++];
or even func( ar[idx++], ar[idx++], ar[idx] ); => func( ar[idx], ar[idx+1],
ar[idx+2] ); idx+=2;

pointers are another stumbling point to me with pascal/deplhi/modular2 I
always found them a little confusing and akward, once I leant C I found
pointers much more useable.
and although passing 'var' params is nice I prefer the C *, &foo or c++ &
I do miss sets, they where useful but that is realy the only good thing I
can say about pascal based langs

pascal based langs also try to give the illusion of robustness by (imho)
hiding much of what they are doing away from the programmer, C makes no
illusion about letting you walk of either end of your array!
on the whole I would say C makes you aware that you have to program robustly
and unlike c++ of delphi there is little going on outside your code that you
have to be aware of.

"Ilya Minkov" <midiclub@8ung.at> wrote in message news:bgp2e4$1vin$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Walter wrote:
> > I wrote several pascal programs long ago. Most of the programming time
was
> > spent *fighting* the compiler, as it thwarted me at every turn. It was
so
> > bad I was turning to using assembly language. Then I chanced on a copy
of
> > K+R, and it was like a breath of fresh air. No longer was I fighting the compiler, as the language allowed me to do what I wanted.
> You had a wrong compiler. :) Nowadays they don't have these problems.

What those old pascal compilers did was implement the language per Wirth's spec. It wasn't until years later that compiler companies figured out that pascal, as specified, is an unusable language. Each then put in a boatload of mutually incompatible extensions to fix that, making pascal a very unportable language.

> > I also simply liked the terseness of C. When you write a lot of code,
the
> > long wordy keywords of Pascal just get annoying.
> No they don't!

<g>

"Mike Wynn" <mike.wynn@l8night.co.uk> wrote in message news:bgu082$k41$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> pascal based langs also try to give the illusion of robustness by (imho)
> hiding much of what they are doing away from the programmer, C makes no
> illusion about letting you walk of either end of your array!
> on the whole I would say C makes you aware that you have to program
robustly
> and unlike c++ of delphi there is little going on outside your code that
you
> have to be aware of.

You're right that what-you-write-is-what-you-get in C can be very appealing.

Try http://merjis.com/richj/computers/ocaml/tutorial/


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