Time for a new programming language paradigm

[Colborne_Greg]

20 years of programming in Cobol, C++, and html The language that meets your requirements is Visual Basic 2013. Everything that C++ can do Visual Basic 2013 can do. Here is an example of code, with no documentation, lets see if you can figure out what it does.

Public Interface iArray(Of someType)
Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As someType)

Sub AddRange(Range() As someType)
Function Clear() As someType()
Property Collected() As someType()
Function Count() As Int64
Property Item(Index As Int64) As someType

WriteOnly Property NewItem() As someType
WriteOnly Property NewItems As someType()
Property Populated As Boolean
Function LastIndex() As Int64

End Interface
<Serializable>
Partial Public Class Array(Of SomeType)
Implements iArray(Of SomeType)

Private mCollected() As SomeType
Private mPopulated As Boolean


Public Event ItemAdded(ByRef Item As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).ItemAdded


Public Property Collected() As SomeType() Implements iArray(Of SomeType).Collected
    Get
        If mCollected Is Nothing Then mCollected = New SomeType() {}
        Return mCollected
    End Get
    Set(value As SomeType())
        mCollected = value
    End Set
End Property

Public Sub AddRange(Range() As SomeType) Implements iArray(Of SomeType).AddRange
    Allocate(Collected, Range)
    Populated = True
End Sub
Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType) As SomeType()
    Return Allocate(TheArray, Value, LastIndexOf(TheArray))
End Function
Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType) As SomeType()
    Return Allocate(TheArray, Values, LastIndexOf(TheArray))
End Function
Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Values() As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType()
    Try
        For Current As Int64 = 0 To Values.Length - 1
            Allocate(TheArray, Values(Current), Index + Current)
        Next
    Catch
    End Try
    Return TheArray
End Function
Public Shared Function Allocate(ByRef TheArray() As SomeType, ByVal Value As SomeType, ByRef Index As Int64) As SomeType()
    Try
        TheArray(Index) = Value
    Catch
        ReDim Preserve TheArray(Index)
        TheArray(Index) = Value
    End Try

    Return TheArray

[BillWoodruff]

I think it's time for you to move forward from living in the late Paleolithic in terms of developer tools to the modern era where superb tools like .NET's compiler, Visual Studio, and add-ons like ReSharper, help make coding much more efficient. It's always going to be a "Tower of Bable" out there, in the real world. But, if you enjoy living without the wheel, fine.

“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.” Jorge Luis Borges

[Andy Brummer]

How long have you been waiting to trot that one out? That frickin' awesome.

Curvature of the Mind now with 3D

[Mark_Wallace]

So you want to learn COBOL?

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

[Eytukan]

You beat me to it Chris. I read this title in CP daily news, & came rushing here to suggest the legendary Osmosian. Great! You have a good memory too ;). Hail Osmo!

Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy.

[Tomas Ramirez Gomez]

Visual Basic .NET have almost all those features

[Stefan_Lang]

As for missing equal signs, try Yoda conditions[^]! :)

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[Stefan_Lang]

It does create a maintenance hell ;P Seriously though: you can write undocumented code in any language. And it is never a good idea!

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[Stefan_Lang]

snorkie wrote:

If it was easy, everybody could it it!

Did Resharper help you fix that sentence? No? Then why didn't you use VS to write your posting? ;P On a more serious note: 1. VisualAssist beats Resharper and (Un)Intellisense on C++ coding (at least unmanaged C++ - no experience wrt managed C++/CLI). 2. I do miss quite a few official standard C++11 features that VS still doesn't support. And I hate to figure out the exact syntax on certain template constructs with virtually no documentation on how to do properly (or at all)! (E. g. defining a template friend function inside a class) 3.

snorkie wrote:

And before going off on costs, there are free versions of VS.

... which don't support Resharper (or any other plugins) I do agree that VS is a great tool. But for some people it may not be the right one.

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[Stefan_Lang]

Wow, at >8000$ for a smartphone resolution screen? Seriously? :wtf:

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[kalberts]

Algol-67 was defined in terms of abstract syntax elements that could be represented using any suitable set of concrete symbols. I never saw much Algol-67 source code, but most of what I have seen used German keywords. (Algol-67 never caugth on - it was way ahead of its time. Even today, 47 years later, it would definitely be descibed as a very advanced language. I haven't looked at the specification for a while, but I am sure that some of its useful features are still missing from today's languages.) Maybe it was Algol-67 that inspired us when we as students made a Norwegian version of Pascal. It really was a simple word replacement program replacing MEDAN with WITH, BYRJ with BEGIN and STOGG with END (those who know Norwegian will see that we chose the dialect-based Norwegian variant), writing it to a temporary file and invoking the standard compiler on that temporary one. It worked perfectly as long as you in you user defined symbols stayed away from both the Norwegian and English reserved words.

[kalberts]

Portable assembler is known as plain C.

[Sinisa Hajnal]

My thoughts exactly, except portability part. I work in VB.NET, have weak typing, good descriptive code etc... And recently I had a discussion with a colleague who prefers C# who espouses "real" programming, symbols instead of words for start/end of function etc...until we got to code review and I got to see: while () { ... ... if () { ... ... break; } // end if ... } // end while :-\ I didn't call him on it, really :cool:

I intend to live forever. Or die trying.

[kalberts]

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

A decent C# class uses less characters to convey the same info as written in Object Pascal. Less characters to convey the same info - do you really need a "begin" and an "end" block?

If you are looking for terseness, go APL. On a more moderate scale: What is really the purpose of those parentheses around if conditions, while conditions and for loop specification? Pascal can make due without them. Why do you have to double up the equals sign? Pascal can make due without that. Why do you have to double up all logical operators? The answer: Because the language "designers" didn't have a clue about language design. Why do you have this ugly try-catch mess? In Chill, any statement may include an exception handler before its closing semicolon; it doesn't have to be pre-announced. The presence of an ON clause implies exception handling; you don't need to pre-announce it. Why do you have to explicitly declare that "this is the end of the handling of this alternative", when the specification of the next alternative follows immediately? In Pascal you don't. Why do you have to enclose exception handling in braces? The braces must , unconditionally, be there, but Chill makes due without them. A general rule in Pascal and its derivatives is that {...} is a block, and a simple statement is a block, so wherever a block is called for, a simple statement can be used. Why to you have to include the body of a switch statement in braces, creating two nesting levels (the second one is each of the alternatives) when there logically is only one? etc. etc. Terseness is to remove from the language selected keywords and markers on your private hate list. The keywords/markers on someone else's hate list that is not on yours, you might fiercely defend as a way to improve readability, provide redundance to catch errors etc etc. Very few people really sat down to "tersify" a language specification, removing ALL unneccessary blurb; they use terseness as an argument to defend their own hate list.

[Stefan_Lang]

Most of the problems you describe are the reason why coding guidelines and code reviews exist. If you choose not to use coding guidelines, or don't bother to hold reviews to ensure guidelines are followed, many of these problems simply can't be avoided: a language definition can't stop a programmer from calling a variable i rather than, more descriptively, row_index. Only guidelines and reviews can achieve that! Some specific comments: 3) As pointed out above, variable naming and code documentation cannot be enforced by a language. 4) I disagree: Strong typing helps the compiler (or interpreter, whatever) to decide whether a given statement is ok or maybe a typo. It helps the compiler find many errors of the types you earlier described! The main reason for strongly typed languages is that they improve the automation of error detection in the code. It also helps people understand other people's code, specifically since documentation and sensible variable names cannot be enforced by a language: when you can look up the exact type of a variable, that alone may offer a hint what it is used for. Type information is the only part of code documentation that can be enforced through a language! If documentation is important to you, then you want strong typing! 5) Neither number formats nor definitions of formats are truly universal. You have to accept that anything relating to format either must be defined specifically, or will deliver different reults in different locations. 6) That is a direct conflict with 2: you can't dynamically create new types in a compiled language. That said, your example describes an entirely different situation: that your program can deal with an arbitrary external object. Short answer: impossible. Long answer: Hollywood lies! No you can't interface Alien Computer hardware with a run-off-the-mill lapktop! Not even if you're Jeff Goldblum!

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto) Point in case: http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/02/apple_gotofail_lessons[^]

[cosmogon]

rjmoses wrote:

Take away one '=' in the if statement, put it in a seldom used error recovery routine and you have the bug I spent six months chasing. The mental skills required to spot the difference between '=' and '==' is difficult overcome when you are under pressure.

A good IDE like Visual Studio will catch that one, and many other errors, when debugging. With ReShaper installed it will catch it when typing.

[Klaus Werner Konrad]

Fire up any text editor, compile the code below as pure C and you have what you asked for ...

#define IF if (
#define THEN ){
#define ELIF } else if (
#define ELSE } else {
#define ENDIF }
#define IS ==
#define EQUALS ==

[Klaus Werner Konrad]

In C / C++ the IDE cannot catch it, because it as an absolut correct statement ! Ever seen the simple strcpy() function:

void strcpy( char *source, char *destination )
{
while (*destination++ = *source++ )
;
}

[Gary Huck]

Something is wrong if you're spending 6 months chasing "==" for "=". With the debuggers/IDEs of today I find chasing them (no, they never go away [someone elses code]) to be fairly efficient. As for the rest, well, it's the same old programmer-preference thing. No one thing or set of things will satisfy everyone. I believe Abe Lincoln said that. Personally, I really like braces vs. BEGIN/END. Any anyone who feels the need for "// end of some-block" has written a block that is too long; just break it out into smaller chunks/methods/functions.

[Klaus Werner Konrad]

This will not help you if you are comparing two variables ...