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Re: EE or CS?

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On 1/9/2013 6:51 AM, BartC wrote:
> "Rui Maciel" <rui.maciel@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:kcjk9h$fdr$1@dont-email.me...
>> BartC wrote:
>>
>>> No-one would dispute that C has an awful lot of quirks.
>
>> Claiming that, in your opinion, a specific programming language has some
>> quirks, is worlds away from claiming that someone is a poor programmer
>> because a programming language and a Turing Award-winning operating
>> system
>> he developed are "pretty terrible products".
>
> I  never mentioned any individuals. The products are admirable achievements
> of the time, but are dated and IMO have had too much influence in the
> computing world.
>

influence is often a sign of being a successful design...

it is like complaining about how the Quake Engine has had a major 
influence on nearly every 3D game engine created since the 90s.

(nevermind to some extent the influence Carmack has had on the design of 
OpenGL...).


>> Even so, you will be hard-pressed to point out a single programming
>> language
>> whose core language, comparatively, has less quirks than C's.
>
> I think the problem will be limiting to list to just one! But it all
> depends
> on what is meant by a 'quirk'. Here's just one of C's: if you write 12 in
> the language, it's the constant twelve as you might expect. But if you
> write
> 012, with a leading zero, it means ten! OK, one more: accidentally leave
> out
> the closing "*/" of a comment, and see what happens. Likely, nothing, until
> your application goes wrong in mysterious ways. There are dozens more...
>

early on, octal was considered much less arcane.

granted, yes, I would prefer nestable block comments.
in my own language, they are nestable.

however, missing */ will often more likely have a more obvious effect:
if it creates a mismatch in the number of braces, the compiler will 
complain.


>>> I meant case-sensitive...
>>>
>>> The fact that you've had to ask, must mean it's even more of an issue
>>> than
>>> I thought!
>>
>> Don't try to put words in someone else's mouth.  The reason I had to ask
>> was
>> because your assertion regarding the "case-insensitive nature of the
>> Unix"
>> was obviously bullshit.
>
> I already explained it was a mistake.
>
>>  And it was bullshit two-fold: Unix is not "case-
>> insensitive" in any way, and only those who are completely oblivious to
>> what
>> they are doing are annoyed by it.
>
> And the problem, in case you haven't got it, is that you have to get the
> case of a command or filename or option (or URL etc) *just right*,
> otherwise the OS has absolutely no idea what you're on about. Or it
> might be
> mistaken for something entirely different and unexpected.
>

not a big issue...
the alphabet has 52 alphabetic characters...

it is almost too bad we don't have more, for example, we could have 208 
if bold and italic were significant (and could stretch ASCII to around 
380 unique printable characters...).


actually, could almost be done as an ASCII extension, say if special 
control characters / sequences or similar were used, and supported both 
by a text editor and by a language and its libraries (such that string 
operations preserve character modes).

example:
"\e*": Bold Mode;
"\e/": Italic Mode;
"\e#": Bold + Italic;
"\e ": Normal Text;
...

maybe along with:
"\e[": Good old ANSI code;
"\e{" ... "\e}": command or format group;
...

then with nifty keyboard shortcuts to switch between typing in these modes.

well, that or use UTF-8, and make the special commands or extended 
formatted-characters be part of the Unicode space (and/or use some 
combining diacritics for good measure).


because, hell, why not?...


then when typing something (like a command, filename, or variable name), 
then you can also make sure to get the bold and italic just right...

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Thread

EE or CS? bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2013-01-08 09:28 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2013-01-08 10:41 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-01-08 21:41 +0100
    Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 20:50 +0000
      Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-01-08 22:25 +0100
        Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 21:35 +0000
          Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 22:51 +0000
            Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 23:23 +0000
              Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 23:31 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 12:58 +1300
                Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 01:35 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-09 02:13 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 11:28 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-09 12:51 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 23:52 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 12:04 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 14:28 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 21:58 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 18:25 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-01-09 05:35 -0800
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 22:43 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 12:22 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 14:20 -0600
    Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 22:15 -0600
  Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 10:19 +1300
  Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 22:54 +0000
  Re: EE or CS? Robert Miles <robertmilesxyz@gmail.com> - 2013-01-12 16:26 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? Dan <dantex1@aol.com> - 2013-02-19 19:12 -0800
    Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-20 09:16 +0000
      Re: EE or CS? Dan <dantex1@aol.com> - 2013-02-20 18:59 -0800
        Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-02-21 16:40 +1300
          Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-02-21 11:45 +0100
          Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-21 11:45 +0000
        Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-21 07:36 +0000

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