const

[Roberto Mariottini]

Walter Bright wrote:
[...]
> Yes. I suppose we could invent a name, like frzapper instead, but I 
> don't think that would help.

I think it may help.

In my experience adding new keywords is often less painful than it 
seems. For example Java added the (probably unneeded) keywords 'extends' 
and 'implements' without creating a single problem. No programmer coming 
from C or C++ have had any problems with 'extends' and 'implements'.

On the other side, changing the meaning of a well known keyword can be 
very painful: it's still difficult to figure out that 'long' in Java 
means a 64 bit integer.

Ciao

P.S.: I'm not a native English speaker, and I've learned programming 
without knowing a word of English.
I can assure you that even if 'while', 'for', 'read', 'float', 'thread' 
were unknown words for me, I've learned their meaning anyways.
Imagine also a Japanese or Chinese programmer: for her even 'integer' 
means nothing (so I was lucky!). Still there are millions of Japanese 
and Chinese programmers.
And 'long', 'short', 'double', 'float', have lost their original English 
meaning long ago.

-- 
Roberto Mariottini, http://www.mariottini.net/roberto/
SuperbCalc, a free tape calculator: 
http://www.mariottini.net/roberto/superbcalc/