SJS wrote:
I watched a lot of people struggle a long time when indentation was just
a little screwed up.
Err, like what? I mean, you're either in the A column or the B column.
It's either a label, or it isn't. It doesn't seem any easier to screw up
than forgetting to put a : after the target of a goto in C.
Well, no, that's a short COBOL program.
Yah, it was. On the other hand, it was a 32K computer and took an hour
to compile it errors and all. :-)
I worked in a COBOL shop for a few years, and I learned that it's the
simplest mistakes that cause the most programmer frustration.
Yep.
Seriously, who had problems with the fortran rule that code started in
column 8, and columns 1-6 were the label? Why is that worse than labels
in C that have to be followed by a colon?
Most of the time it was one missing space, and whoops!
And the compiler didn't complain on the line where you had code starting
in the identifier area or something?
That's why so many languages did away with such rules.
No, they did away with it because people stopped using punched cards
that would get out of order if you dropped them on the floor, for example.
I have never written any code on punch cards.
Yah. Such things were much less useful on actual files. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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