[Gllug] re: OSS CMSs

[David Damerell]

On Thursday, 28 Apr 2005, Anthony Newman wrote:
>Pete Ryland wrote:
>>Everyone seems to write in their own subset of the language and to be
>>able to read another's code one must basically grok the *whole*
>>syntax, which is embarassingly huge in Perl compared to the
>>simplicity of, say, python's syntax
>Is this a roundabout way of saying Python is more understandable because 
>it's more verbose? So why not write in C?

No, what's being said is that a language with more than one way to do
something demands that someone who wants to read other people's code
understand all commonly used ways of doing things.

This is true; and it's one advantage of C over C++ for readability,
that C has such a small idiom that there really is only one way to do
most things.

>>Anyway, I guess my whole point is that I think reducing syntax aids 
>>readability, but the antithesis, to which Perl subscribes, may lead
>>to many ways to do the same thing, but IMO hinders readability and
>>maintainability.
>Do you read a red-top or black-top daily newspaper? The only reason I 
>ask is that the former might be accused of using a *ahem* less wide 
>vocabulary in  order to be ostensibly accessible to a wider audience, 

This is a bad analogy. The extra vocabulary in a real language
expresses subtle differences of meaning; but a programming language is
dealing with a definite set of fundamental operations; the redundancy
being discussed is extra vocabulary that really does mean exactly the
same thing as existing vocabulary.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Mania, May.
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