Re: [TUHS] roff(7) [ and other related stuff ]

[markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>]

Hoi.

[2022-01-01 23:02] jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
>
>     > From: John Cowan
> 
>     > Why use C syntax? What was wrong with Fortran, Lisp, or Cobol syntax,
>     > extended to do what you wanted?
> 
> Why do all hammers look basically the same? Because there's an 'ideal
> hammer', and over time hammer design has asymtoted toward that 'ideal hammer'
> design.

Hammers don't look so much the same, except that each has a stick
and a head. Seems this example is a too simple one.

Saws for instance look quite differently, even within western
culture, but even more between western and japanese culture!


> So I suspect there is, to some degree, a Platonic 'ideal syntax' for a
> 'classic block-structured' programming language, and to me, C came pretty
> close to it.

I suspect that this assumption is limited to our programming
culture. We can hardly think outside of it. That's for the same
reason, Europeans did not create saws in Japanese style -- they
simply solved the same problems in a different way.

Thus I'd rather call it one of many possible good syntaxes for a
classic block-structured programming language ... and within our
culture about the best one.

But as well, in such views we obviously like to ignore the very
suboptimal `switch' (good for compilers; bad for programmers) and
the not so clean optional braces for single-statement blocks. C's
syntax is by no means as perfect, as we like to see it, but
nonetheless, it is very good. (And I like it a lot myself.)


Btw: With the rest of your message, I agree. Good that we're not
stuck with one syntax (and thus with one programming model)
forever. ;-)


meillo