Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!cadre!pitt!cisunx!wpnst From: wpnst@cisunx.UUCP (Bill 'Deus' Nixon) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Icon, was:Re: Discussions of languages (Was: Re: Modern langauges) Message-ID: <6397@cisunx.UUCP> Date: 24 Jan 88 18:16:16 GMT References: <1520@ogcvax.UUCP> <1522@ogcvax.UUCP> <2582@enea.se> <3315@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <17327@topaz.rutgers.edu> <6121@cisunx.UUCP> <2666@mmintl.UUCP> Reply-To: wpnst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu.UUCP (Bill 'Deus' Nixon) Organization: University of Pgh, Zets Lines: 36 In article <2666@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes: >What I really hate is having the compiler *not* yell at me for mispelling >one of my variable names, and having to spend (sometimes) hours to find the >bug. The overlooked declaration can be fixed in a few minutes. It takes a >*lot* of those to make up for one six hour debugging effort. Complier not yelling at you for things ? Well, maybe AI research will come up with a compiler capable of this. The worst language to make a typo in is 'c'. For example, a friend of mine was working on a LARGE project (ie. lots and lots of code.), and had this line buried inside of the middle of it : if (c = 10) Of course he meant, if (c == 0), but hey, he was used to PASCAL, and well, couldn't figure out why the code was bombing with certain test cases. What's worse, a mispelling that isn't caught, which could be caught with a spelling checker variation, or a logic error, that may be caught with lint, if you can read and understand all the stuff. Program error are always going to be prone to human error no matter how much checking the complier/paser/linter does. Now, for a question - what is the langauge with the least about of risk to make 'typo' mistakes ? Maybe you all can sent your opinon to me, and I'll post the "poll" results in a few weeks. -- Bill 'Deus' Nixon One of the Univ. Of Pgh ZETS ! mail : wpnst@pittvms.BITNET wpnst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.EDU {allegra, cadre, psuvax1}!pitt!cisunx!wpnst