Re: [OT] Re: C++ *for Git*

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Kyle Rose <krose@krose.org> writes:

> Miles Bader wrote:
>> Of course, some of the most horrid unreadable source code I've ever seen
>> is in one of git's competitors -- written in python....
>
> Indeed. :-)
>
> At the office, people constantly badmouth Perl, which has some
> admittedly evil syntax (especially around exception handling).

Since Perl has agglomerated pretty much _every_ syntax, it is not
surprising that evil syntax is included.

> C++ is in the same category as Perl IMO: too easy to produce
> unreadable code.

Not quite.  Perl gives you a hundred illegible ways to _say_ the same
thing, C++ gives you a hundred illegible ways to _achieve_ the same
thing, but using different means.

> I like Ruby, except for the performance problems.  Once they have
> those worked out, Ruby will be "Perl done right." ;-)

Ruby again is in the "throw every syntactical idiom I can think of
together" ballpark.  I find that a design mistake in Perl, a design
mistake in Ruby, and even in C++ (Ada syntax for templates was just
stupid, but at least there is no alternative syntax for it).

That's one of the things I like about Lua: its syntax fits on one page
in the reference manual.  And the reference manual has a paper size of
about A5.  While the syntax for Lisp would probably fit in the margin,
it does so at a cost in legibility.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum