Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!abrodnik From: abrodnik@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrej Brodnik (Andy)) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Re: BY expression Message-ID: <20498@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Date: 3 Feb 90 15:51:11 GMT References: <90033.103548TRL3@PSUVM.BITNET> <231@altos86.Altos.COM> Reply-To: abrodnik@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Andrej Brodnik (Andy)) Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 33 Hi! Well, in fact the "BY" construct is not the only one which needs or asks for further comment: "Why "Father" didn't do in the other way". In fact there is no language structure in Modula-2 to which "no" question can be addressed. But more or less all the questions can be answered only by prof.Wirth himself. I remember (let us stay at discussion about "BY") that somebody mentioned something like: "If you would like to have a step of an "expression" length, then you should use a "WHILE" statement." Correct. But why don't you use "WHILE" statement in all cases? I think, that all this complaints are more or less guessings about the real intention of prof.Wirth design and they can be correctly answered only by him. In final stage they can be translated to the debate which language is the best. And such a debate is neverending. It is very similar to a trick which can parents use when their children insist to hear a fairy tale in the evening. For this purpose we use a comparisson between Story about a glass snail and Story about the angry snake. The first is more beutiful, while the second is longer. So you can play with your children as long as you would like. When he chooses one you propose him the second one. The similar story is when you are talking about the programming languages. We behave like children who always would like to hear the other story since it is better or easier or something else. But this behaviour runs the civilization further! Regards to all of you Andrej PS: Perhaps you didn't thing about the assembly language. In fact as much as you can do using any other language, you can do using it!