Worst ideas/features in programming languages?

[Basile B.]

On Monday, 25 October 2021 at 12:00:09 UTC, ClapTrap wrote:
> Pascal has shr, shl, begin, end, maybe other wordy stuff, where 
> do you draw the line? Or rather where do you write "line"? :)

The line is simply the style consistency.

- `and` and `or` are named operators
- `&&` and `||` are symbolic operators

Named operators cause problems for the sustainability of a 
language over time. A language should be consistent, so when new 
operators have to be added, pascal-like languages must stick to 
the tradition.

A few years back there was a discussion on the freepascal forums 
about [the conditional 
expressions](https://www.mail-archive.com/fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org/msg41242.html). To keep the language coherant (i.e dont start to use _symbolic operators_) the final proposition was an intrinsic `IfThen`.

It's easier to create new operators if the _symbolic_ style is 
used.

To go back to `&&` and `||`...

There are just the shortcut versions of `&` and `|` ...

Pascal can use `and` and `or` for both logical and bitwise 
arithmetic expressions for the sole and unique reason that 
**there is no implicit conversion** from `Boolean` to the integer 
types and and no implicit boolean evalation of integer types.

So... in `if e1 and e2 then ...`, to compile `and` has to be a 
shortcut logical and. dot. (`e3 := e1 and e2; if e3 then...` is 
not rewritten `if e3 <> 0 then...`.)

You see that finally this has nothing to do with the hype or 
whatever. In both case the style and the semantic are perfectly 
coherant.