CompuServe Messages

>I ALWAYS program clearly. I can't fathom this. Certainly I have always make an effort to program as clear as possible, however some language straighjackets did not (and still do not) always let me do it to the extent that I would have liked. Re BASIC: fine, go back to 1977 then. That wasn't the point. Nor is it to pick out extensions, etc. Which of these two flavors is best: 1) id = foo(abc, xyz) 2) t1 = abc t2 = xyz gosub blah id = retval Or take FORTRAN's: if (…) 100, 200, 200 These are not intended as attacks against these languages. If we're talking about clear though, that IS NOT. Yes, there are clearer ways to do this in FORTRAN (sytactically and via convention) but nothing like literally having blocks and else's. As I understand it in a conversation I had with somebody who claimed to be well in sync with the FORTRAN 7x and 9x standards, they still do not have this. Yes, I know some FORTRAN's do though, I gladly worked with them 15 years ago. I think you would have too and probably did make the same choice. Did you? If so, why? >I'm sorry that this may dispell some notions of the progress of computer >language developement, but it _is_ true. Certainly no notions that I have. There's been a lot of stuff for a long time now. In fact, re true, most of what we're doing is simply rehashes of earlier things. >It is perhaps more obscure, IMHO. There is no doubt that some languages are getting more complicated syntactically and otherwise, and hence clarity and obscurity can walk hand in hand in some cases.