Hacker News Reader

Personally I don't mind unusual syntax. I do find it a bit problematic that programming languages seem to select syntax almost at random, or at least they don't tend to spend a lot of time explaining it [0]. A lot of special characters can quickly become less pleasant with a non-English keyboard however. Especially if the syntax is hard to predict (with for example autocomplete).

[0] https://www.adacore.com/uploads_gems/Ada_Safe_and_Secure_Boo...

View on HN

It seems strange to call out Ada for "unexplained" and "unusual" syntax. The syntax is very similar to the syntax of Pascal, which was an enormously popular language at the time when Ada was designed.

I meant that Ada does explain its syntax (at least partly in that pdf), but many languages don’t seem to. And when they do I can more easily accept whatever it is. It is when the syntax seems random I can’t wrap my head around it.

Ah, OK. It looked like you were citing Ada as an example of the problem, not of the solution.

I don't mind unusual syntax as long as it looks like C, so to speak. (C is weird, but I'm used to it, and context switching is easier the more similar a syntax is to C.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com