OT Signature quote [was Re: Unrecognized escape sequences in string literals]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:41:41 -0700, Douglas Alan wrote:

> I like to be able to read everything from left to right, and Lisp does
> that more than any other programming language.
> 
> I would definitely not like a language that obscures assignment by
> moving it over to the right side of lines.

One could argue that left-assigned-from-right assignment obscures the 
most important part of the assignment, namely *what* you're assigning, in 
favour of what you're assigning *to*.

In any case, after half a century of left-from-right assignment, I think 
it's worth the experiment in a teaching language or three to try it the 
other way. The closest to this I know of is the family of languages 
derived from Apple's Hypertalk, where you do assignment with:

put somevalue into name

(Doesn't COBOL do something similar?)

Beginners found that *very* easy to understand, and it didn't seem to 
make coding harder for experienced Hypercard developers.



-- 
Steven