Worst ideas/features in programming lang

[Basile B.]

On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 16:54:07 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 at 14:07:42 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
> Grøstad wrote:
>> FWIW, from Stefik and Sibert, «An Empirical Investigation into 
>> Programming Language syntax», _ACM Transactions on Computing 
>> Education_, vol. 13, No. 2, 2013:
>
> Another paper, Altadmri and Brown, «37 Million Compilations:
> Investigating Novice Programming Mistakes in LargeScale Student 
> Data», *SIGCSE’15*.
>
>
> They point out that using "&" instead of "&&" is a mistake that 
> it takes a long time to fix since it does not lead to a 
> compilation error. It occured a bit more often than having a 
> mismatch between a function return type and the type of the 
> variable it assigns to.

I'm a bit surprised by the results of these studies. I'd say that 
what people prefer actually does not matter because they dont 
necessarily have in mind the consistency criterion mentioned 
earlier. (side note: there's actually a proglang, Quorum, that 
has part of the design bassed on surveys !)

What's important is that the compiler should prevent reasoning 
errors, just like when AssignExp is rejected if used as condition.