Re: The joy of FORTRAN-like languages

On 30/09/2024 18:01, John Ames wrote:

On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 07:22:45 +0100
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
 

I think the worst thing was Turbo Pascal, which convinced huge
numbers of amateurs that they could actually write code.

 OTOH, like BASIC, it *enabled* large numbers of amateurs to actually get
shit done and develop software that met their own needs when solutions
were either nonexistent or prohibitively expensive - the kind of thing
that drove the microcomputer revolution. Sure, it might've made for a
little mess along the way, but in the long run it's not so terrible ;)
 

The problem is that many of those amateurs thought they were in fact professionals
And you could hack code *without regard to its context*
Sure I hacked a little basic, but once I started on assembler and C, my engineering training kicked in and it was all documented, sometimes planned and really quite structured.
"Every code block in assembler must have an explanation of its purpose that will likely be three times the length of the code."..was the mantra. Even today writing code that no one but me will see I have extensive headers for every function or code block explaining what it is supposed to do and often line by line comments.
And sometimes I write the comments first.
// open port
//set up event handler for asynch connection
//listen on port, and vector incoming data to handler
...and so on
--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Al Capone