On Nov 22, 2007 10:32 AM, Waldemar Kornewald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Warren, > > What bothers me more about the syntax is that it breaks math > conventions. Even a child knows that a + b / c is not the same as (a + > b) / c. This is unintuitive in that it is inconsistent with what we > learn at school and anyone who has to use even very basic math should > know and be able to expect those rules. With Smalltalk I fear mixing > conventions up when doing math or programming. > > Apart from that I could easily live with the syntax. It just should be > easy to read, easy to think in, and follow basic math/science > conventions. Lisp, Forth, Prolog, and Haskell (%|()::++->>= \_;%!ยง, > anyone? ;) fail badly in at least the first two points, as do most > other languages invented by scientists. These are all niche languages. > Of course, mainstream languages are not as powerful as the > "scientific" ones, but obviously most programmers prefer something > that doesn't make them think and talk like an alien from a parallel > universe...or a scientist. :) > > It's ironic that as scientists we learn complexity, but no simplicity.
Interesting. Above you want precedence rules so that math operators work as you expect, but then you complain about complexity. Lisp is the simplest language there is (though Common lisp has some fairly complicated libraries) and Smalltalk is right behind it (with simpler yet powerful libraries). _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
