Re: Programming?

["Steve Poling" <sdp@xxxxxxx>]

>As long as we're bringing up crackpot, out-of-date [*] languages like
>LOGO and APL, I'll mention one of my favorites.  This one's still a
>good bet for children to learn how to code.

crackpot languages?

i really learned to program using a language called IMP that was sorta a
cross between Pascal, Modula and C. You didn't say A=B, you said A <- B,
which confused all the C hacks who thought it was a bass ackwards pointer
dereference.

but the *coolest* part about IMP was that it had this "feature" called
syntax.

once you declared syntax, you could instruct the compiler to change the
language's syntax to accept whatever coding construct you'd specified. of
course, after you declared the syntax, you had a second problem of correctly
specifying the desired semantics to go with it. decidedly way cool, and an
incredibly stupid idea. (unless you thought APL wasn't obscure enough and
wanted to redefine IMP to become even more obscure.)

smile and cheers,

steve