[LUAU] Re: Python (Was Re: Hosef)

[Jim Thompson]

Clifton Royston wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 11:28:43AM -1000, Jimen Ching wrote:
>  
>
>>On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Tim Newsham wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I always found "continue" to be a lot more explicit in situations
>>>like this:
>>>
>>>     while(*s++ = *t++)
>>>         continue;
>>>
>>>the empty semi-colon being the least attractive alternative (did
>>>he really mean to leave the body empty?  not to mention the greener
>>>programmer will easily overlook the semicolon).
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm curious, can you give an example of where someone forgot to type in a
>>statement, but remembered to type the semicolon?  [...]
>>    
>>
>
>  Getting back to my point in using those examples, the point was not
>that they are examples of good code, but that they are idioms of their
>respective language.  This discussion re exactly what form is the best
>way to write a looped post-increment copy-thru-pointer in C makes the
>case - you need to understand the meaning and implication of the idiom
>to participate intelligently in the discussion, as well as to maintain
>others' programs or write programs maintainable by others.
>  
>

While recently searching for something else(*), I came across this great 
explaination of wny C's strings are what they are (by Dennis Richie), 
followed by a slight correction (on their basis (or lack thereof) in 
BCPL's strings, followed by an excrutiating flame by none other than 
Eric Raymond, followed by dmr's recant that Firth's correction was, 
indeed correct, followed by a most-humbled esr in abject apology.

I was amused.

http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000378.htm

>  Likewise for the Perl example: to even know whether it's good or bad,
>one needs to know, for instance, that split (like many other functions)
>implicitly operates on the "$_" variable, 
>
this "convenience" is one of the things that has oft annoyed me about perl.

>Knowing the basic syntax of each language does not initially give you this.
>  
>
all languages have architecture, but not all language architectures are 
good.

jim

(*) evidence that esr's claim to having been one of the original 
contributors to the GNU system, with contributions that date to 
1982-1983 is actually true.   The problem is, esr didn't contribute 
until 1988, and "Project GNU" could not have started until January 5, 
1984. 

http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000376.htm