OT: Punctuation-starved Programming Languages

[Don Y]

woodelf wrote:
> Don Y wrote:
> 
>> A = B + 1
>>
>> technically has two bits of punctuation but they are semi-intuitive;
>> one would assume "equals" to mean '=', etc.
>>
>> OTOH:
>>
>> A ::= B + 1
> 
> B + 1 -> A       Seems more streight forward to me.

This is how I learned "programming" back in the dark ages
(though it was expressed as A <- B + 1 and read as "A gets
B + 1)

> B > 1 if ...   fi   how about
> B <= 5 if ... then ... fi
> B = 7  ifthen ... j ifthen ... fi

This is perl-esque.

> begin ...  end
> call  a b c foobar

Fine for a procedure.  But, what if foobar is a *function*!

It's *really* hard to mess with this syntactic sugar -- we've
all become so used to seeing and using it that it's ingrained
in our expectations.  :-(