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From: jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: named parameters and
Message-ID: <1991Jun30.174120.17703@netcom.COM>
Date: 30 Jun 91 17:41:20 GMT
References: <1991Jun30.1034.2615@canrem.uucp>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  UNIX System {408 241-9760 guest}
Lines: 24

jonathan.harley@canrem.uucp (jonathan harley) writes:

>The onus of good programming style is ALWAYS on the programmer, regardless
>of the language...

Suppose I have two languages, A and B. A is designed to be as readable as
possible, with ample syntactic sugar, built-in constructs to support
things that are readable (such as enumeration types, named parameters, etc).
Language B has none of this. Now, I challenge a programmer to 1) write
code as readably as possible in both languages and 2) write code as un-readably
as possible in both languages. My claim--and it never seemed like something
anybody would argue about--is that the effort required to accomplish #1 in
language B is much higher than in language A, and that the effort required to
accomplish #2 in language A is much higher than in language B. In the #1
case, I need to work hard to provide workarounds for all the readability
support missing from language B and provided free of charge in language A.
In the #2 case, I need to work hard to work around all the readability support
present in language A (I need, for example, to diligently NOT use enumeration
types, named parameters, etc).
-- 
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