Rocco Moretti wrote:
Steve Holden wrote:
The principle of least surprise is all very well, but "needless
surprise of newbies" is a dangerous criterion to adopt for programming
language design and following it consistently would lead to a mess
like Visual Basic, which grew by accretion until Microsoft realized it
was no longer tenable and broke backward compatibility.
...
But I agree, having "the easiest thing for newbies" as your sole
criterion for language design is a road to madness, for no other reason
than that newbies don't stay newbies forever.
If Visual BASIC is the example of "easiest thing for newbies",
then it disproves your theory already. I think VB newbies
*do* stay newbies forever (or as long as they are using just VB).
-Peter
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