Language Idioms

[Lee Dickey]

A recent writer says:
>      ...... I want to talk about programming idioms.
> These are code sequences which produce some useful non-obvious result.

I react when I see the word ``idiom'' used this way.  To me, an idiom is a 
set of works which, when combined, have a meaning that cannot be deduced 
from the meanings of all of the constituent parts.  For instance, the 
meaning of the phrase ``Fat chance!'' is not likely to be discovered by 
someone with a dictionary.

I am not saying that we, as programmers, should not have certain common
phrases that we use often.  We do.  Nor am I saying that what we write
must always be immeadiately obvious to a beginning programmer in a survey
course that touches on several different languages.

But, is there any serious programmer who advocates the introduction of new
meanings for programming phrases that are different from the combined
meanings of the constituent parts?