Hi, Scott,
This is an interesting point of view Marc, but I wonder if you are basing your point of view on your knowledge of C. Look at your example:
Yes, absolutely. I did not make that clear enough, sorry.
The basic for my "excurse" was, of course, that the "reader" (and the writer) of code is a developer, not a narrator. A developer will most likely be used to the standard term "++". That's the basic for me saying "it is clear".
Well, actually a "C/C++" developer. I learned to program in assember and in most assemeblers I've come across, the increment operation has a specific instruction, like so:
IAR - Increment A-Register INC HL - Inrement HL Register
I then learned Pascal and Basic and got used to this Syntax:
counter := counter + 1 Pascal let counter = counter + 1 Baslc
I then moved onto C and the syntax:
counter++
Was not at all obvious to start with and so I used:
counter = counter + 1 Which worked just fine, until I looked at the assembler that was generated and found that it did something like this:
MOV A,counter ADD A,1 MOV counter,A
Instead of:
INC A
I would imagine that the ++ syntax came about for a number of reasons none of which has anything to do with clarity:
1. It was quicker to type counter++, and using a Teletype this was important.
2. It was quicker to print counter++ again using a Teletype at 33 BPS this was important.
3. It was easier for the code generator to substitute an "INC" operation when ++ was spotted and with limited memory and execution speed this was important.
All these issues are no more. To me the syntax
counter = counter + 1 or add 1 to counter is MUCH clearer, but in this case it really doesn't make any real difference. I really wouldn't mind if Transcript supported both syntax, but I would imagine that this would cause confusion for people that don't have a hard-core programming background, so it's better to just have one syntax, and the "add 1 to counter" seems the better choice.
Just my 5 cents worth, cos I'm waiting for a compile to finish!!
All the Best Dave
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