James Giles wrote:
As soon as something is allowed, codes using it will exist. The ivory
tower attitude that "if you don't like feature x, don't use it" simply
*never* applies. As soon as you allow somthing like that, programs
abusing it will illegibly clutter up programming environments
everywhere.
This type of argument comes up often, and I'm often sympathetic.
However, the problem is settling on the meaning of words like
"abusing", "illegible", or "clutter". People have differing opinions.
For example, I find programs with really long variable names with lots
of underscore characters hard to read. Yet some students are taught in
school to write code that way. I'm also generally cool to features
that lead to poor execution speed, but others care little about
efficiency because their programs are so small is makes no difference.
In the end arguments about possible abuse usually lose out to arguments
for possible use.
Cheers,
Bill
--
Bill Long [log in to unmask]
Fortran Technical Support & voice: 651-605-9024
Bioinformatics Software Development fax: 651-605-9142
Cray Inc., 1340 Mendota Heights Rd., Mendota Heights, MN, 55120