Possibly better loop construct, also labels+goto important and on the fly compiler idea.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2013 19:48:55 -0700, rurpy wrote:

> On 10/30/2013 04:22 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

>> Skybuck's experience at programming *is relevant* to the question of
>> whether or not he understands what he is talking about.
> 
> No.  You claimed his proposition "made no sense" based on your analysis
> of it.  

I said absolutely nothing of the sort. You're making that quote up -- not 
just misinterpreting what I said, or taking my words in the worst 
possible way, but completely inventing things I never said. Not only did 
I never say that Skybuck's proposition "made no sense", but I gave an 
example of a language with a loop that does exactly what he wants, and 
explicitly described as making sense:

"There is one sort of loop where it makes sense to have the loop condition
at the end. Python doesn't have such a loop, but Pascal does: the repeat
until loop."

I don't know whether to be more offended for myself, that you would 
invent such a bare-faced falsehood about what I said, or for anyone else 
reading this thread, that you should assume they would fail to notice 
that not only did I not say what you quote me as saying, but that it is 
the *opposite* of what I actually said.

I don't know whether you are deliberately lying, or whether you're just 
such a careless reader that you have attributed words actually written by 
Skybuck to me, but either way I expect an apology from you for putting 
false words into my mouth.

As for the rest of your argument, I am not of the opinion that he is an 
inexperienced programmer because his proposal is "nutty" (YOUR word, not 
mine) since I don't think his proposal is completely nutty. There are use-
cases for putting the loop condition at the end. I think he is an 
inexperienced programmer because of the lack of any sign in his emails 
that he has any meaningful experience in programming.

As for your defence[1] of the ad hominem "Clearly Julie is mistaken, 
she's just a girl, what would she know about programming?", I am not one 
of those cultural relativists who thinks that any belief, no matter how 
stupid, should be judged on how sincere the person expressing it is. 
Regardless of how sincere they might be, they are simply *wrong*, their 
argument is irrational, and it is an ad hominem fallacy. Women, even 
"girls", are capable of having detailed knowledge about programming, and 
there is no logical or factual reason for debating this point, any more 
than we should be debating whether or not people with brown hair or flat 
feet can program.


> (Even if none of the above were true, I would still ask, why shouldn't
> someone's opinion on a programming topic stand on their arguments alone
> without regard to whether they've written code on a physical machine?)

Of course their arguments stand on their merits. But those merits are 
likely to be pretty slim, if their arguments are not grounded in reality. 
We know what happens when "great thinkers" start philosophising without 
any grounding in reality, we get Pliny the Elder who concluded that elks 
have no knees, and Aristotle, who was married twice but apparently never 
thought to look inside either of his wives' mouth, who maintained that 
women have fewer teeth than men. And so we come back to Skybuck, who 
apparently believes that the use of GOTO instead of loops makes code more 
reliable and easier to maintain.




[1] To head off false accusations that I'm misrepresenting you, here for 
the record are your exact words:

    [quote]
    Secondly, the example ad hominem argument you gave, "Clearly 
    Julie is mistaken, she's just a girl, what would she know about
    programming?" depends on the non-validity of the logical
    implication.  Yet I'm sure you are aware that are some people who
    would find that a valid implication and if you could not defend it,
    then you would not be able to claim ad hominem. Of course it *is*
    easily defendable which is why you used it as an example.
    [end quote]

On the contrary, the implication that women cannot program is utterly 
counterfactual and hence is indefensible. It simply isn't and cannot be 
true. Even if there was not a single female programmer in the world -- 
and in reality there are thousands or tens of thousands -- there is 
nothing in biology, chemistry, physics or abstract logic to suggest that 
female Homo sapiens in this world could be inherently incapable of 
programming.



-- 
Steven