A single, general looping construct? (was: why no "do : until"?)

Steve Williams sandj.williams at gte.net
Thu Jan 4 10:02:43 EST 2001


Alex Martelli wrote:

> [snip]

> The need for structure is not under discussion: rather, the basic
> guideline on how to pick the structures.  Some languages bask in
> 'being very expressive' by making you choose among umpteen ways
> to express the same thing, a la Cobol's
>     ADD CREAM TO ESPRESSO GIVING CAPPUCCINO
> vs
>     LET CAPPUCCINO = CREAM + ESPRESSO
>
> I'm quite happy for people who like such "expressive richness"
> to pursue it in the many languages that follow this "the more the
> merrier" philosophy -- Cobol and Perl being just two reasonably
> consistent examples of such redundance.

[snip]

I think you need to brush up on your COBOL syntax.

Anyway, nobody ever said COBOL was expressive.  People said COBOL was
'verbose'.

But its design goals were 1)  readable code and 2) platform
independence--features we can all appreciate and strive for in any language,
even Python.

The obscurantists among us (say, for example, those who would write CSTMRNO
instead of CUSTOMER-NUMBER or those who would add magic constructs to
programming languages) didn't like the verbosity, and the computer
manufacturers didn't like the platform independence.

That said, I do like verbs in a language--I actually use them in my everyday
speech.





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