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From: wolf@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Mike Wolf,4264777)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: M2Amiga, another bunch of answers
Message-ID: <1336@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: Sat, 5-Dec-87 23:33:33 EST
Article-I.D.: saturn.1336
Posted: Sat Dec  5 23:33:33 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Dec-87 04:49:10 EST
References: <1221@sugar.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: wolf@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Mike Wolf)
Organization: UC Santa Cruz; Division of Social Sciences
Lines: 41
Keywords: language sensitive editors.
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:12029 comp.lang.modula2:560

In article <1221@sugar.UUCP> schaub@sugar.UUCP (Markus Schaub) writes:
>>> 	Modula II is *much* too wordy for my tastes... when I look at source
>>> I want to see my PROGRAM, not a bunch of keywords.
>>
>>Me too. My biggest complaint with highly structured languages is that you
>>can't see anything but the structure.
>
>I'm currently working with a syntax directed editor for Modula-2 on the PC
>and now that I'm used to it I think this is a good thing. Forget about
>typing keywords, semicolons, indentation etc. Very nice features are wrap and
>unwrap of LOOP/IF/WHILE etc statements. Select a block and say 'make an IF'.
>Not yet available on the Amiga, and I don't know if it ever will be.
>
>     //	Markus Schaub		uunet!nuchat!sugar!schaub      (713) 523 8422

Last summer I was hired to do ADA programming under VMS.  (UCSC just has
UNIX)  The latest editor for VMS is called the Language Sensitive Editor.
I found the LSE more of an annoyance then anything else, and quickly
returned to using the TPU enviroment I have set up.  I found that using
LSE just slowed me down, because everytime I expanded the structure of
my program I got way more stuff then I wanted.  I wasted a lot of time
going through the options and the various structures just selecting the
ones I wanted.

At first I figured that the problem was just that ADA makes languages
like PASCAL look absolutly free form.  After trying the LSE on PASCAL
and C, I decided that it slowed me down in other languages also.  An LSE
style editor seems like it would only be useful for a group of people who
are experienced enough to know what all the structures are, but not
experienced enough so it's faster to just type it in yourself.  I suppose
it might prove useful to those who type slowly.

Structured languages may be necessary for some types of programming
projects, and they may ease program maintanence, but they're no fun. :-)

+------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
|        Michael Wolf                | An old Scandinavian quote:            |
|  BITNET: wolf@ucscj.BITNET         |   "You can lead a herring to water,   |
|  ARPA:   wolf@ssyx.ucsc.edu        |    but you have to walk real fast,    |
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