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Re: error message I don understand [message #174927 is a reply to message #174904] Mon, 18 July 2011 15:55 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Thomas 'PointedEars' is currently offline  Thomas 'PointedEars'
Messages: 701
Registered: October 2010
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August Karlstrom wrote:

> On 2011-07-17 15:03, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>> On 7/17/2011 8:55 AM, August Karlstrom wrote:
>>> It is a very easy mistake to do if you are used to saner programming
>>> languages in which `=' has the standard mathematical meaning (this
>>> symbol has been used in mathematics to denote equality for some 500
>>> years).
>> This isn't mathematics - it is programming, as people have told you
>> before. If you want mathematics, get a chalkboard.
>
> Don't be silly. There are several programming languages in which `='
> denote (surprise) equality.

And I have found all programs written in any of those programming languages
to be more difficult to maintain than the rest. One such language is
VBScript (which is particularly bad designed in other respects as well).

It is no coincidence that all modern higher-level programming languages make
a syntactical and not only a contextual difference between assignment and
comparison (`=' means comparison in a VBScript `If' statement, but
assignment in a standalone VBScript statement – why?), and that older ones
tend to do not (but speaking of math, even Pascal, arguably one of the older
ones, has `:=' and `=', respectively): Intelligent life is distinguished by
its ability to learn from past mistakes. For this is not only a maintenance
problem; it also makes compiling such source code more complicated as the
underlying grammar ends up being ambiguous.

I would always consider it a result of bad language design for a (built-in)
operator to have such very different meanings.


PointedEars
--
Prototype.js was written by people who don't know javascript for people
who don't know javascript. People who don't know javascript are not
the best source of advice on designing systems that use javascript.
-- Richard Cornford, cljs, <f806at$ail$1$8300dec7(at)news(dot)demon(dot)co(dot)uk>

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