Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!craig@loki.ARPA From: craig@loki.ARPA (Craig Partridge) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: re: more about programming style Message-ID: <11485@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 09:17:16 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11485 Posted: Thu Jul 11 09:17:16 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 08:51:56 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 25 I'm afraid I don't find your story convincing for a couple of reasons. First, and maybe I'm rare, but when I learned to program several years ago, my university took the view that as good programmers, we were expected to be able to learn a new computer language in a few hours or days. Indeed, after the first couple of courses, professors would simply announce they expected a programming assignment to be in X programming language. If you didn't already know it (and frequently people didn't) you had to learn it, fast. So I have little sympathy for your poor person who doesn't know the language (take a book home and read for a couple of hours tonight). Second, I think all languages have special idioms that people who program in them typically use. In most cases, I think new programmers have some obligation to use those idioms. Why? Because (contrary to your example) in most cases someone reading your code is more likely than not to be well versed in the language, and will be more confused by code which doesn't use the established idioms. Witness the letters already submitted in which people say strongly they find i++ more intuitive than i = i + 1. Craig Partridge craig@bbn-loki (ARPA) craig%loki.arpa@csnet-relay (CSNET) {decvax,ihnp4,wjh12}!bbncca!craig (USENET)