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From: Jan Ziak <0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: why do people choose a language, was Why are ambiguous grammars usually a bad idea?
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 20:19:31 -0800 (PST)
Organization: Compilers Central
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On Wednesday, December 29, 2021 at 11:28:34 PM UTC+1, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> On 2021-12-16, Roger L Costello
> > Question: Opine about why languages are usually defined and implemented with
> > ambiguous grammars.
>
> Novice programmers have historically been attracted to cryptic-looking
> languages. It is one of the main reasons for the success of languages
> like C and Perl.
> ....

I know that what I am about to write does not answer the original question
about ambiguous grammars, but I feel I have to respond to the claim that
novices are attracted to cryptic-looking languages. If that was true then the
brainf**k language would be in the top 10 languages in use today.

People new to programming aren't attracted to C because it is cryptic, but
because - for example - in the 1990-ties they learned that C was used to
implement the game Doom with only a few elements of assembly
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Doom#Programming). Doom was
implemented in C and wasn't implemented in Lisp/Pascal/Smalltalk - which
increases the popularity of C and decreases the popularity of
Lisp/Pascal/Smalltalk.

Some young programmers were attracted to Smalltalk after the year 2002 because
they watched the Squeakers movie (I believe it is this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2172065/).

In summary: Novice programmers are attracted to particular programming
languages because those languages are popular in their social networks.

-atom
[Sigh. You're probably right. Historically, novices started with a toy
language which left out more advanced but important ideas like data
structures and name scope, and gave them an unfortunately blinkered
idea of what programming involves. One time when I was a grad student
I had to explain to one of the undergrads why you really didn't want
to write all your programs in Tiny Basic. -John]