Carmack about static analysis

[Derek]

On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:19:47 +1100, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:

> On 12/24/11 9:54 AM, Derek wrote:
>> I'm sure you are totally correct; I'm not really a C++ coder. And I'm
>> sure you also process the specialist/expert level of D knowledge to make
>> reading contemporary D code a non-issue.
>
> Well I'm also a specialist in C++, actually more so than D as I have  
> longer experience with C++ and wrote more code in it.

LOL ... that went without saying ... your reputation precedes you.


>> But when compared to spoken
>> language text, D code can appear quite obtuse to average coders. And I
>> believe this is main do to the very high use of non-alphabetic symbols
>> and a level of overloading of both punctuation characters and reserved
>> words.
>
> This issue (analogy with human language) has been a long preoccupation  
> of me. I have ended up at an odd point - I lost interest.

I'm sorry that I wasn't clear enough (irony?) but I'm not advocating that  
programming languages resemble human languages, just that in comparison -  
comparing D text with English text for example - D source code can be  
harder to read. Probably because D relies much more on the precise use of  
punctuation symbols than English text does. Our latin-alphabet focused  
training has to take in a larger character set, and with nearly all D  
punctuation being single-character entities, one has to read the text more  
carefully than English text.

I am not suggesting that D change any of this because that would turn D  
into something else and thus alienate most of its adherents.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia