perl qstn...

[RW]

On Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:55:44 -0600
Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 05:36:32PM +0100, RW wrote:
> > 
> > IMO this is a bad mistake that other languages were quite right not
> > to copy - a test shouldn't come after a block of code unless it's
> > evaluated after the block (as in repeat...until) 
> 
> There are more things in heav'n and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt
> of by designers of eagerly evaluated prefix notation languages.

And most of them are obscure for good reasons. Just because a a syntax
fits into a classification scheme doesn't make it a good idea.

Natural languages are mostly driven by spoken usage, in which people
firm-up half-formed ideas as they speak - this is not a good model for
programming languages. If you are hacking out a quick and dirty script
it may be convenient to type the decision after the action, but it
don't I think it promotes good quality software.

Imperative languages have a natural order of decision followed by
action, and code is most easily readable if the syntax doesn't try to
subvert that.