Re: OT: Why is C so popular?
On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 22:03, Deryk Barker wrote:
> Thus spake Steve Lamb (grey@dmiyu.org):
>
> > On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 16:01:48 -0500
> > Alex Malinovich <demonbane@the-love-shack.net> wrote:
> > > I'm also very reluctant to learn Python because I'm very adamant
> > > in how I use whitespace. Though I will need to pick it up sooner later.
> > > As well as Ruby and probably PHP as well. You can never know too many
> > > languages after all. :)
> >
> > That was one of two points that really stuck in my craw about Python. But
> > ya know what? 2+ years later and now I go back to Perl code or poke through C
> > code and I just find it nasty to paw through. And writing either of those,
> > oy, don't even get me started. It's definitely something to get used to and
> > the more used to doing things with block delimiters the more friction there is
> > to doing it any other way. But I'd not go back and I wish other languages
> > would take the same path.
>
> I agree 100%, although it was my encounter with Miranda c1986 that
> first prompted the "I'll indent how I like" reaction.
>
> But you are right, having to indent properly produces much
> cleaner-looking and easier to maintain code.
>
> And I really appreciate the latter after having spent several hours on
> afternoon about 15 years ago trying to find a bug in a C program (not
> written by me), and missing it because poor and inconsistent
> indentation by the original author made me misread the code.
>
> After I found the bug the next task I set myself,, before doing
> anything else, was to indent his code properly. All went much better
> after that.
>
> I also think that enforced indentation is a very good thing in a
> language used to teach programming - one of the things that makes
> python so good for that, in fact.
But as you just demonstrated, regularized indenting is crucial to
any code bigger than, oh, say, a 25-liner.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"What other evidence do you have that they are terrorists, other
than that they trained in these camps?"
17-Sep-2002 Katie Couric to an FBI agent regarding the 5 men
arrested near Buffalo NY
Reply to: