Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!defun.utah.edu!shebs
From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: From Modula to Oberon
Message-ID: <5316@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: 5 Mar 88 19:59:14 GMT
References: <7161@sol.ARPA> <2787@enea.se> <1008@pur-phy>
Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 16
Keywords: Enumerations, subranges, arrays, FOR, Eiffel

In article <1008@pur-phy> hal@newton.physics.purdue.edu.UUCP (Hal Chambers) writes:

>How would programmers feel if a language designer decided that a hierarchy
>of implicit operator precedence was dangerous and required programmers
>to always use parentheses explicitly!

Gee, sounds like Lisp to me!  I don't recall ever hearing that explicit
parens everywhere reduced programmers' productivity; on the contrary, Lisp
systems are considered one of the best tools to get lots of code written
fast (reliability is another matter).  Dunno why people assume that an
operator precedence hierarchy is a Good Thing, given that its main rationale
is historical (dating from the late Renaissance?), and that reduction of
the size of source code is not a particularly strong reason!

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu