Re: A petition to J3 apropos FORTRAN's future

From: Dr Chaos (mbkennelSPAMBEGONE_at_NOSPAMyahoo.com)
Date: 03/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 01:06:22 +0000 (UTC)

James Giles <jamesgiles@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Dr Chaos wrote:
> ...
>> C had structures. You could make linked lists which looked
>> like they were from the the textbooks. You could make trees.
>
> This particular argument always bothers me. The textbook
> writers were in need of some simple examples to demonstrate
> the basic properties of pointers. They chose lists and trees
> as simple things that students could understand so that they
> could concentrate on the purpose of the lesson: teaching
> the properties of pointers.
>
> However, it is *not* a good idea to implement lists or trees
> with the naive textbook style! In fact, that's almost always one
> of the worst approaches you can take. The textbook had a
> specific purpose: teaching pointers. The programmer has
> a different purpose: using lists or trees. The textbooks
> didn't teach that second purpose.

That's unfortunate. You've told me this before, and I've still looked
for good examples so I can learn how to do it, but they are rare.

You have to admit that the conceptually simplest way to do it
(i.e. from verbal description to code) is with pointers---just as the
conceptually simplest way to use complex numbers is to declare COMPLEX
:: a and not some awful circumlocution in other languages.

I think it is important that a language can support the intellectual
and pedagogical structures of easy algorithms as well as sophisticated
ones.

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