why no "do : until"?

[Peter Hansen]

Steve Lamb wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 02 Jan 2001 21:06:33 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
> >Requiring edits to two possibly widely seperated places in the source code to
> >change a single algorithm value is (in my experience) going to cause a bug
> >some day.
> 
>     Makes you wonder how all those people who had to init variables in the
> past got through life with such problems facing them, huh?  I mean, the
> variable is right there before the loop.  The horrors, the agony, oh my, this
> is worse than y2k!  Call out the national guard, the world is going to END
> because someone cant make an edit in two OBVIOUS places!  

You are a cowboy-hacker type of programmer, not one working as a serious
software engineer in a group environment, right?  Or, if the latter, your
management just hasn't caught on yet.

Seriously, nobody who really programs for a living instead of as a hobby
should (in my opinion) have the attitude you express above towards a
maintenance issue such as this.  In my opinion.  Nothing personal.

> Hell, I'm more
> concerned with a lack of braces that vim can spot so I can bounce on the % key
> to get from one end of a block to the other quickly than with a variable being
> unedited when it is sitting at the top of the loop.  Guess which one I do
> thousands of times more than the other?  Not saying Python needs braces, just
> pointing out there are elements of it which run against other languages 

I'm hoping to find an editor sophisticated enough to allow me to write a
macro which does this kind of thing (bounce around a block) even with
Python code.  Only problem is, it would probably have to be programmable
*using* Python (which coincidentally VIM is), but for other reasons I
would need a MODELESS editor (dang VIM anyway! :-).

> the tools devised for them that this is so insignificant it is a wonder anyone
> has the energy to argue the matter for over a WEEK now.  GET OVER IT!

There are just too many idealists around here, hoping against hope that
their (oops, our) efforts will result in some incremental improvement in
the quality of software development.  Maybe somebody was listening,
somewhere, and has learned something from the exchange, anal though it
might seem to some.