I never understood the complaints about verbosity in Pascal languages and the escape to C, Perl and friends.
Why not use APL then?
Programs are to be read, not to be write-only.
Why not use APL then?
Programs are to be read, not to be write-only.
> {} as delimiters make much more sense than BEGIN/END.
Sure {{{{{}}}}}}
That's MUUUUCH better!
Now we can discuss tab vs spaces.
PS: spaces obviously.
Yes, I did it on purpose.
> PS: spaces obviously.
Well there we happen to agree. :)
You say that like reading comic books is an anti-intellectual crime.
Getting to the point, look at these examples and tell me which one is better from the readability perspective.
> for(std::vector<std::shared_ptr<MyClass> >::const_iterator it = v.begin(); it != v.end(); ++it)
or
> for(const auto &value : v)
Even in the case when the "value" variable's inferred type isn't apparent from the context, we can use
> for(const std::shared_ptr<MyClass> &value : v)
which is still much more readable than the monstrosity in the first example.
I completely agree with that. For example, static typing adds verbosity, but it also documents the program and makes figuring out a large codebase a lot easier. The "noise" can even be reduced in languages with type inference like D, Haskell or C++11.
The thing is, unnecessary verbosity only crowds the code and doesn't add any value. Most of the keywords in "if ... then begin ... end else begin ... end" serve no real purpose and could be replaced with a symbol, like a curly brace.
if
...
else
...
end
I used to be a strong believer in static typing and insist that dynamic typing would be extremely error prone, but when I actually tried it, I found that the additional testing required is pretty much non-existent - if you test properly, you tend to cover types as a side effect.
I'd still prefer static typing, but only if it doesn't get in the way. And that means minimal annotations, and minimal restrictions.
Later Pascal/Delphi compilers had very useful syntax highlighting built in, so this is really not an issue - unless you prefer as much code as possible crammed onto a single "page" (IMO not really helpful for reading).
{} are also somewhat harder (more strenuous) to type than begin/end, especially on german keyboards (it's Alt Gr + 7 / Alt Gr + 0) and even more so on german Apple keyboards ({} are not even printed on any keys there and they are on different key combinations than on PC keyboards).