T
ToM_tOm
I've been programming in C++ for a few years now. At one stage, I had a
great deal of it very fresh in my mind.
About two weeks ago, I started back programming in C++ having not been at it
for maybe a year. I opened a few of my old source files and was... well...
unfamiliar!
Looking at "p_k = &k" and the like left me staring blankly at the screen
trying to think exactly what that meant... ?
A day later I was grand, I had the syntax down.
But... I realised something about the C++ programming language. I'll try to
keep this objective, as I'm sure a few of you here would object to any
suggestion that this is a "flaw" in the language, but here goes:
C++ is not at all "anti-rust". By that, I mean that it's very easy to become
rusty at it, and once you do, you're perplexed looking at all the strange
syntax!
Compare this to Visual Basic. If you could do something like "p_k = &k" in
VB, then it'd probably look like:
SetPointer p_k = AddressOf( k )
, which we English speaking humans can understand very easily!
I'm not all suggesting that the language should be dumbed-downed or
deficienized (as is the case with VB), but I think it would be helpful if
actual English words were used in the place of symbols.
Don't get me wrong though -- I'm a fairly intelligent person and I've no
problem at all reading through a source file looking at all the different
symbols; I can interpret them swiftly on-the-fly, but if I go twelve months
without seeing them, then they're just unfamiliar alien language.
The whole "alien language" aspect is what makes C++ so daunting for
beginners. To a person who doesn't know C++, or who is rusty, a C++ source
code file looks like horribly complex gobledygook! Little do they know
though that we C++ programmers read through it as easy as our native
language... just so long as we're not rusty!
Anyway, I've said enough. I'm summarise:
Because we use symbols in C++, if we go a good deal of time without using
it, we become horribly rusty.
If we were to use actual English words instead of symbols (as does Visual
Basic), then the language would be learned more quickly, and also we
wouldn't spend as much time digging into the back of our brain once we
become rusty.
Maybe someone out there has made a parser to change symbols into words and
vice versa?
ToM_tOm
great deal of it very fresh in my mind.
About two weeks ago, I started back programming in C++ having not been at it
for maybe a year. I opened a few of my old source files and was... well...
unfamiliar!
Looking at "p_k = &k" and the like left me staring blankly at the screen
trying to think exactly what that meant... ?
A day later I was grand, I had the syntax down.
But... I realised something about the C++ programming language. I'll try to
keep this objective, as I'm sure a few of you here would object to any
suggestion that this is a "flaw" in the language, but here goes:
C++ is not at all "anti-rust". By that, I mean that it's very easy to become
rusty at it, and once you do, you're perplexed looking at all the strange
syntax!
Compare this to Visual Basic. If you could do something like "p_k = &k" in
VB, then it'd probably look like:
SetPointer p_k = AddressOf( k )
, which we English speaking humans can understand very easily!
I'm not all suggesting that the language should be dumbed-downed or
deficienized (as is the case with VB), but I think it would be helpful if
actual English words were used in the place of symbols.
Don't get me wrong though -- I'm a fairly intelligent person and I've no
problem at all reading through a source file looking at all the different
symbols; I can interpret them swiftly on-the-fly, but if I go twelve months
without seeing them, then they're just unfamiliar alien language.
The whole "alien language" aspect is what makes C++ so daunting for
beginners. To a person who doesn't know C++, or who is rusty, a C++ source
code file looks like horribly complex gobledygook! Little do they know
though that we C++ programmers read through it as easy as our native
language... just so long as we're not rusty!
Anyway, I've said enough. I'm summarise:
Because we use symbols in C++, if we go a good deal of time without using
it, we become horribly rusty.
If we were to use actual English words instead of symbols (as does Visual
Basic), then the language would be learned more quickly, and also we
wouldn't spend as much time digging into the back of our brain once we
become rusty.
Maybe someone out there has made a parser to change symbols into words and
vice versa?
ToM_tOm