"while/else" (ugh) (was Re: [oclug] Ruby)

[David F. Skoll]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Michael P. Soulier wrote:

> > Anyone can understand that, but hardly anyone understood the "else"
> > thing.

>     Perhaps, but I doubt it's the only programming construct that few
> people understand when they see it for the first time.

>     How about upvar in Tcl? Pointers in C? Just about anything in C++?

"upvar" is not an English word, so when you see it, you know something
magical is going on and you read the manual.

Likewise, pointers in C don't have an English equivalent, so you consult
a C reference manual.

C++ is a thoroughly disgusting language, so I won't comment on it. :-)

The point is that "else" is a perfectly good English word, and using
it in a way totally unrelated to its English meaning is a big mistake.
Imagine a language where you would write an abs() function like this:

sub abs (x) {
   for (x >= 0) {
      putback x;
   } notfor {
      putback -x;
   }
}

Ouch!

--
David.