4 ms·
May be obvious to some, but the braces can be replaced by BEGIN and END keywords by multiple methods, including careful editor search and replace, or use of a
by vram22 6y ago
May be obvious to some, but the braces can be replaced by BEGIN and END keywords by multiple methods, including careful editor search and replace, or use of a preprocessor before compiling (may not handle tokens in strings or comments), or maybe the best option, by hotkey mappings, like BEGIN to some key combo, and END to another.
- webmobdev 6y agoOh yeah, I do know that with modern editors it's not such a chore anymore. I just mentioned that as an example of verbosity that slightly annoys me. (The same with Ada too, which I understand also draws inspiration from Pascal).
- vram22 6y agoYes, I get you now. Agree about the verbosity issue, although, interestingly, it did not bother me at all in Pascal, which I learned as my 2nd language or so, before C. Noticed it even in the syntax of BCPL (C's grandpa), and, IIRC, BLISS, and of course Eiffel. The 2nd- and 3rd-last above were before my time, only read about them in books. I like Eiffel for many reasons, though. A real pity it did not get more popular.
- vram22 6y agoI found BCPL quite cool too, except for the verbosity, which, like Pascal, I did not much feel at the time. I read the whole (slim) book about it, by Martin Richards, its creator, and enjoyed it. Good amount of low-level system programming examples in the book, and it all being in a language with only one type (the machine word), made it more fun to me, although (or because) I did not know of higher level programming constructs at the time. Its history and uses are interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPL