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From: Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:42:05 +0100
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On Thursday 07 Jun 2012 at 18:21, "Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson"
<johann@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> Another point to make.  Why do we assign from right to left?  Is it in
> any way natural?  What's wrong with
>
>   a + b --> c                  "a plus b assigned to c"
>
> instead of
>
>   c <-- a + b                  "c becomes a + b?"
>
> The more I think about it, I believe the former construct is a bit more
> natural since we read from left to right.  However, I'd want to see or
> work on a non-trivial project in such a language to make up my mind.

It sounds like you want COBOL, which has:

MOVE A TO B

ADD A TO B GIVING C

Or, if you want it the other way around:

COMPUTE C = A + B

You can also say:

ADD A TO B

which puts the result in B. On the other hand:

MULTIPLY A BY B

puts the result in A!

Then there's:

DIVIDE A BY B

(or is it "DIVIDE A INTO B"?)

My point is that by trying to be more "natural" and follow
English language rules, rather than a concise and consistent
set of rules, COBOL ends up with something verbose
and inconsistent.

--
			Martin

STRL Reader in Software Engineering and Royal Society Industry Fellow
martin@gkc.org.uk  http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/  Erdos number: 4
G.K.Chesterton web site: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/
Mirrors:  http://www.gkc.org.uk  and  http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc