Subject: Re: More C-like MOO

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 06:58:38 -0700

>On the other hand, the syntax is pretty icky.

I'm coming from the other direction than many of you - so I'll throw in my
two cents.  I don't know C.  Yes. God forbid I should try and learn MOO w/o
the slightest bit of C knowledge, but there you have it.  I actually know
enough C to compute the amount of mileage your care gave you and nothing
more.

I LIKE the syntax. It serves to help me understand C a little better. It's
a half-step towards 'real' programming languages (or at least, that's how
it feels to this neophyte) and if I can get comfortable with the syntax on
MOO, that makes moving up to C that much easier on me.  MOO is *gasp*
educational for me.

>I *vastly* prefer keywords 'and' 'or' and 'not' over && || and !.
>I think it makes a difference in readability.

Ick. I've gotten used to && || and !, and think they do well. (see above
for extra input which I won't repeat here).

>My favorite assignment operator is <-. The old := is not half as nice.
>My favorite equality operator is =, but as people have been saying,
>this causes confusion among those with faulty childhood education. :-)
>I'd settle for == or 'is'.

I agree however with the general trend on this point. = and == are a bit
confusing. := and == would seem to correct this problem, and the := is like
pascal, so it's not out of the blue - and would be recognized by more
people. 

>Nobody has mentioned the inequality operator. I'd say, if equality is
>'is' then inequality should be 'isnt'; otherwise, if NOT is ! then
>inequality should be !=; otherwise I personally would prefer /=
>as in (shield your eyes) Ada, because it is more visually suggestive.
>But it might be simplest to keep it as !=.

Hey! Good idea! Who in the world came up with <> anyway?
Falryx (or some derivative thereof @ wherever)

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From: Moonchilde <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 13:22:32 -0700

Well, I know for a fact, that I would absolutely detest removing the
&&, ||, and ! operators in favor of English keywords.

A few reason for this are:
a) I don't think that anglicized programming languages are any more intuitive
   or easily learnable
b) it restricts the possible variable names even further.

I have programmed in quite a few languages, and found the languages
like C with symbolic tokens for And, Or, etc to be more intuitive to me.

I don't believe everyone would find them more intuitive, but I seriously
doubt that it is that hard for a person to learn a very simple programming
language.

My opinion would be that more time should be spent providing easier access
to things that people want to do (like break out of loops) rather than
fixing something that isn't broken.

--Moonchilde
--Moonchilde
([email-masked])