FWIW, from Stefik and Sibert, «An Empirical Investigation into Programming Language syntax», ACM Transactions on Computing Education, vol. 13, No. 2, 2013:

Both programmers and non-programmers had their preference for boolean and ordered as: x and y, x&y, x&&y. With a dip in interest for the && version. Which isn't surprising.

For boolean or there was more deviance. Non-programmers preferred: x or y, either x or y, x and y (!). Non-programmers seemed to have problem grasping the concept of logical or. Programmers preferred: x or y, either x or y, x||y.

For string concatenation programmers had a preference for: +, &, _ and a dislike for: -, ?, $

(The authors list many other constructs.)

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 14:07:42 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

Another paper, Altadmri and Brown, «37 Million Compilations:
Investigating Novice Programming Mistakes in LargeScale Student Data», SIGCSE’15.

They point out that using "&" instead of "&&" is a mistake that it takes a long time to fix since it does not lead to a compilation error. It occured a bit more often than having a mismatch between a function return type and the type of the variable it assigns to.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 16:54:07 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I'm a bit surprised by the results of these studies. I'd say that what people prefer actually does not matter because they dont necessarily have in mind the consistency criterion mentioned earlier. (side note: there's actually a proglang, Quorum, that has part of the design bassed on surveys !)

What's important is that the compiler should prevent reasoning errors, just like when AssignExp is rejected if used as condition.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 17:41:40 UTC, Basile B. wrote:

My phrasing may have been a bit imprecise. The students were asked to rank the phrases as to how well they thought they matched up to the concept. So, basically, how intuitive they found them. They had C++ experience.

Yes, I found some papers on that one too! It appears to have been developed for blind programmers (?!), but has been adopted more widely in teaching.

I also found a paper that created and played melodies when debugging programs so that you could hear how the program executed. I assume this means that you could hear when a loop was exited, a branch was taken etc.

Surprising things to be found when looking around! Unfortunately there has been very few controlled usability studies of programming language designs... I found a presentation that claimed there has only been 22 studies (over 50 years?).

I think there are many aspects to focus on. I'll keep it short here. Some dimensions I think are relevant:

• learnability: how intuitive and natural is the syntax?

• retention: how easy is it to remember what you have learned (consistency, mnemonics etc)?

• skimmable: how good impression of what goes on do you get by skim-reading?

• legibility: how quickly do you get a correct understanding of what goes on when reading?

• error prevention: is the syntax resistant to typos that go undetected?

Clearly "and"/"or" is more resistant to typos than "&&"/"||", and also more skimmable with high learnability/retention (especially for "or").

But, if you don't allow implicit conversion to/from bool then the compilation stage should catch most such typos in the type system. So the impact of syntax also depends on language semantics.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 18:35:24 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

May also add that the number of years they had used C++ did affect how well they thought the C++ phrases matched the concepts, as we might expect.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 01:05:22 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

Exactly!! If they are technically comparable then you would choose the one that looks more nordic. If this identity nonsense comes in it only does so after technical requirements are met.

And chainsaws are pretty simple machines, I mean in terms of design they are pretty much all at the same place. So you can probably find very similarly specced machines by all the big manufacturers.

Programming languages are not like that, they're not technically comparable, you pick any two languages you can find a shed load of technical reasons to chose one over the other.

You read up on the web, or you ask someone you think will be able to help. But you don't go and ask them "I need a chainsaw, which is the most nordic?".

Or maybe you do? :)

Saying PhP is just as good as any other tool is not a rational point of view.

And if you use statements like that in your reasoning then you end up in stupid places where you cant dislike like something just because it's crap. It has to be because it doesn't fit your identity.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 21:31:05 UTC, ClapTrap wrote:

Hm, I don't think anyone are making high speed chainsaws anymore (I think they max out at 11000RPM now). Only matters slightly when delimbing really. RPM goes down real fast when you enter anything with thickness (it is a thinning saw, so not very powerful, but easy handling).

Most people tend to go with what-other-people-are-going-with. For instance, C++ is pretty much a lonely king-on-the-hill for graphics and audio. You go with the group that you identify with is using. Java for business applications. And so on.

I don't actually think average developers look for new opportunities when picking a language. When they pick a framework, they might. For language choice, I think average programmers go with something that makes them feel safe.

Heh, when I was young I totally wanted the Jonsered 20xx TURBO. That "TURBO" made it seem totally awesome (but probably was no better, clever marketing ;^).

All the pro saws in stores were either Husqvarna or Jonsered back then (Swedish brands) IIRC. I doubt I would have considered any other brands, just assumed other brands were crap. And I still feel/assume that Husqvarna is better than Stihl in handling and build quality, and would not consider other brands than those two. Taking down windfalls can be dangerous, I don't want the saw to fail on me. As I said, you don't know if a tool is robust until it fails.

The syntax isn't great, but the semantics in "modern" Php is good enough. I personally don't feel the package is up to a professional standard, although people obviously use it in a pro setting. So it is a feeling, more than a dissection. If I am going to spend a lot of time focusing on a language I want an aesthetics I like, so that I can write code I from time-to-time feel is beautiful. Can you be truly satisfied with a language if you don't like the looks of the code at the end of the day? I doubt it, but then we are in a very subjective landscape!

It is kinda like why I want the pro line Husqvarna, I want the top handle to be in metal. It gives me a better feeling and I can focus more on the work (and forget about the tool). It is kinda subjective though, whether one feels a metal handle is better than a plastic handle.

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 14:07:42 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

As with all statistics the answers are heavily biased by the choices that were not asked for:
I would strongly prefer ∨ for or, ∧ for and (and ⊻ for exclusive or btw) and I think ~ for cat is a good choice (and far better than +), but I would prefer ∘.

On Thursday, 28 October 2021 at 07:05:47 UTC, Dom DiSc wrote:

"v" was available, but I don't think they got unicode alternatives.

On Thursday, 28 October 2021 at 07:17:00 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

https://tryapl.org/

uni: ∨∧
asc: v^