Stupid little iota of an idea

[retard]

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:42:59 +0200, Max Samukha wrote:

> On 02/12/2011 07:12 PM, retard wrote:
>>
>> You're just arguing against his principles:
>>
>> "..besides arguments ad populum are fallacious"
>>
>> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?
>> art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=129453
>>
>>
> Yes, I use ad populum all the time for its effectiveness.
> 
> I'll try to wriggle out by saying it was not an argument for "iota" but
> rather counterargument to the ad populum argument that "iota" is bad
> since it exists only in the long-forgotten APL and an unknown C++
> extension.

I can't deny facts. Iota is indeed quite widespread. I've seen it in 
several languages. However programming languages are like DNA. Even bad 
syntax sometimes gets in and becomes hard to remove.

Just a day or two ago bearophile showed how the octal literal syntax is 
harmful. But what happened is that it spread from C to C++, Java, and 
even Scala. Same can be said about the floating point literal syntax. Both 
1. and .1 are very minor improvements mainly for the laziest developers 
out there. It's getting harder and harder to get rid of them. Avoiding 
these kind of conflicts between core language features should be priority 
#1.