Worst ideas/features in programming languages?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Monday, 25 October 2021 at 22:05:06 UTC, ClapTrap wrote:
> Well probably they had their own notation on actual pen and 
> paper. But the fact that when coming to type setting they 
> preferred an upside down 'E' over writing a word makes it look 
> like there is something appealing in writing the expressions 
> symbolically that you just don't seem to grasp.

Why personal attacks? If you read old math writings you will see 
that they did actually write out math with plain words. Compact 
short forms came later and mathematicians still don't agree on 
one common syntax. So there is indeed a personal aspect to 
writing mathematics. This become obvious if you read proofs, 
there are many different styles. Clearly strong personal 
preferences at display.

> They are adding about 1000 new words to the English dictionary 
> each year and many of those are new meanings for existing words.

That's more like a library. You don't change the grammar when you 
add new words.

> Programming languages are not even in the same race.

Exactly, they are extended at a far higher pace. 347000 Java 
repos in the past 2 months. How many new "words" do you think 
that is?

> I am constantly having to ask my kids (18 & 22) and their 
> friends what some word or phrase means, (and sometimes I wish I 
> hadn't asked.)

Right, and it is a challenge to stay up to date with the constant 
stream of new versions of programming frameworks.

> Do programmers really think to themselves "I'm not using Pascal 
> because i'll look like a douchebag writing my boolean 
> expressions that way"?

Oh, I think many would shy away from Pascal, Fortran, Ada and 
other languages that are "old" or "grey beard" without knowing 
anything about the languages at all!! There is a clear 
Fashionista element to both programming languages and programming 
frameworks. Which ties into identity and "being current".

Just like there are young wanna-become-programmers that start out 
with C++ (which is a particularly bad choice) because it is used 
in AAA-games and they identify themselves as soon to become 
kickass game-programmers (because that is where their 
heros/passion are).