Bliss was Re: DEC program listing

[Huw Davies]

On 16/08/2005, at 3:07 AM, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:

>  Things like i + 1 =: i or i + 1 -> i make much more
> sense. This typical high level language format makes
> reading code confusing. Sometimes one reads left to
> right for operations while others, one has to look to
> the right to find the sequence and then look to the
> left to complete.

I've always wondered why the form i + 1 -> i never took off. I recall  
at least one
programming language I looked at (can't remember the name right now  
but it was
in a book on compiler writing) that did it this way. Not only is this  
more
natural but it'd have been much easier to explain to those pesky  
first year
University Maths students I had to teach programming to.

>  I know of one case that an upper management person
> sent code back to the programmer and said that he
> must have made a mistake. It looked like he'd sent
> the specification for the code and not the actual
> program. You know you are doing the right thing
> with this kind of compliment. I doubt one would ever
> see that happen when coding in C.

I don't like c very much but I do appreciate that it's really a high- 
level assembler
and for it's time it's not too bad - although I don't think it's much  
of an improvement
on BCPL.

Huw Davies           | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne            | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
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