Subject: Re: Scripting with Visual Basic Clone
From: Tomasz Wegrzanowski (maniek@beer.com)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2000 - 06:58:01 CDT
On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 11:53:29PM -0500, sam th wrote:
> > This isn't true Scheme is easy to learn.
> > For example, adding 2 + 2
> > People tend to think it is 2 + 2, not + 2 2 nor 2 2 +.
> > There are of course more such problems.
> >
> > I think that for most people who already know some programming
> > easy-to-learn = similar-to-C
> > because 99% people knowing any programming language know some
> > C-like programming language (c, perl, c++, objc, delphi, java, even python)
> >
>
> First, I find the claim that Pascal, Python, Perl and C are all similar
> languages strange. They are all similar in that they are all primarily
> procedural languages, but they differ widely otherwise.
If you don't use OO, hashes, pointers multi-dimensional arrays etc.
and you aren't easily confused by changing look of tokens ( begin/end to {/} etc.)
nor forcing indents they are almost equal.
Function calls look the same.
Basic math looks the same.
There is the same logic under flow-control in them all.
All have statement/expresion, lvalue/rvalue etc.
There are pascal2c and c++2c translating programs.
Perl's basics are very C-like.
Python is most different of them all, but also shares a lot with them.
Compare they all to SCHEME (LISP).
See size of difference now ?
> > Please find (or invent - it's FREE-software world, everyone is free to create
> > a new language) a language with minimum syntax and almost-no silly
> > characters. Then we will start Replacement-For-VBasic Crusade. :-)
> > ( this paragraph is real, there is real lack of such language,
> > and inventing languages is easier now that any time before )
>
> Scheme has almost no syntax (see next message).
> Scheme has only one "silly character": the parenthesis.
> And that character makes programming *easier* in many cases.
With `almost-no silly characters' I meant almost-no per line.
And there is one sillychar more : unbalanced-single-quote.
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