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C's syntax (was Re: Python Formatted C Converter (PfCC))

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 24 05:52:21 EDT 2000 
"Ben Wolfson" <wolfson at midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:Bi7J5.414$v3.4961 at uchinews...
    [snip]
> >C is not a trivial language, so the rules are not trivial.  If you have
> >sloppy thinking or are not familiar with the details of the language,
> >you will get yourself into trouble with a non-trivial language.  But
> >then that's true of a trivial language as well.
>
> A non-trivial language needn't have tortured syntax.

Bingo.  Very good word-choice.  C manages to be effective DESPITE
its "tortured" syntax, *because* syntax, fortunately, is _not_ as
important as all that (and people get used to almost-anything if
they have to use it long enough -- they even grow to _like_ it,
as a peculiar but well-known psychological phenomenon, which I've
already compared, half-jokingly, to the Stockholm Syndrome).

But hearing this tortured syntax called "pretty good" grates
on me like nails scraping a blackboard...!-)


Alex
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