Language Redefinition with #define?

[Raymond D. Dunn]

In article <137 at sagan.UUCP> frank at sagan.UUCP (Frank Whaley) writes:

>>..[In response to Algol like & other syntactic redifinitions]
>
>What language is this??  Surely not my old friend C.  I have encountered this
>style of coding in the work of "professional" coders (note that I *did not*
>use the word "programmer":-).  I found chasing the bugs to be similar to
>learning PL/I -- I had to re-educate my fingers in order to be able to
>manipulate these strange symbols.
>.. etc

The interesting thing here I think, is that discovering what:

	foo(bar,harry);

does is regarded as a reasonable part of the debugging process, but:

        repeatuntil(1000)

is not!

I really believe the lines of distinction are very fuzzy, and
probably fall into the same category as style preference - it's not
re-educating your fingers that's the problem, its re-programming
your pattern recognition system.

I must admit that "bad" (my judgement) positioning of braces and
"incorrect" indentation, distracts me much more than the use of
"syntactic enhancements".

Now, sigh, an inappropriately named variable or function can make
me go way over the deep end, and comments which dont match the
code - MY GOD!

(For the argumentative - please note I said "distracts ME" not "is more
distractive" (:-) - perhaps we should develop a net symbol to denote
"this is only my opinion, used in my dealings with myself, and I am
not trying to force it on you" - I wont suggest one, I'm sure there
are some of you out there who may have some ideas (:-) - or would it
make any difference?  It would seem we have too many contributors
who take it as a personal insult if others have different views,
different lifestyles, different values, than theirs - including myself
occasionally!)

Note: this is not a flame at the poster of the above quote.

Ray Dunn   ..philabs!micomvax!othervax!ray