Beyond cabalistic programming languages
Am I alone in finding that these braces and other cabalistic symbols are rather aggressive?
A program written in C, or worse in C++, or one of its descendants often reminds me of these insects with hooks and other biting ... Such as the praying mantis...
If we judge by some comments on programming languages derived from C, the answer is that I'm not the only one ...
Some quotes ...
"When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like your thumb."
"A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor, by people carrying razors."
"Going from programming in Pascal to programming in C, is like learning to write in Morse code."
"Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards removed."
"C++ has its place in the history of programming languages. Just as Caligula has his place in the history of the Roman Empire."
"Perl is the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."
These brackets and braces made sense for the creators of C. Compared to reserved words begin end, for example, they reduced the time of parsing on these computers in 1972, it was a significant advantage. But this is obsolete today with ten thousand times more powerful machines!
About semicolons, the creator of C retrospectively felt that it was a design error. They are actually optional in JavaScript.
JavaScript, like many other languages is also inspired by the syntax of C, but since it is interpreted, and in addition in the browser, it needs this succinct syntax. However that was far from being necessary in Java or Go...
As I have shown in another article, programming language is an area that does not appear, according to the designers, to deserve that we take into account the comfort of the user - in this case the programmer - and especially the beginner. This is an area where you should stick to the habits. Those of who? Not of the beginners of course, it is rather the habits of the creator of the language actually. But not only.
I do not know if this has been the subject of extensive study by psychologists, that in any case was described by Jean-Paul Sartre, the more users suffer when there are instilled something, the more they will become attached to it and oppose to change it, once they have mastered the subject. This is probably why these brackets, braces and other sharp symbols that hurt the eyes remain as firmly hooked into the habits of programmers.
Among the languages that have tried a new approach and more inspired in my opinion, there is of course scriptol, there is more recently Quorum, and two more languages which became popular, Python and Ruby. However these are undermined. The first by Go, another language bristling with hooks and even worse than C, but which has the advantage of compilation speed. The second by Scala or JavaScript with Node, which both are more "scalable".
The increasingly frequent use of JavaScript is still not bad, because it is a language ingenious in its design despite flaws in the details.
And secondly there are multiple languages easier to understand and compiling to JavaScript. It is perhaps that is the future of programming. Not only in cosmetic languages made to facilitate the writing of programs while maintaining a portable backend, but in very high-level languages that compile to these standard languages that are recognized on all platforms. Languages with interactivity for debugging, allowing self-correction of errors, learning by programs.
So we can escape all these brackets that seem to want to grab you until the end of time.