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Re: octave to matlab conversion
From: |
Julius Smith |
Subject: |
Re: octave to matlab conversion |
Date: |
Sat, 8 Oct 2005 10:41:41 -0700 |
On 10/8/05, Tom Holroyd <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Being able to read, maintain, and modify sizeable programs, on
> the other hand, is greatly aided by a language with a clean
> design that isn't cluttered with gratuitous syntax.
One person's gratuitous syntax is another's excellent design. There
is of course a trade-off between naturalness of syntax and simplicity
of language constructs. I prefer a maximally natural and expressive
syntax (e.g., Matlab, and even Perl after you know UNIX, shells, and
C), and I dislike typing, though I still want readability (so I don't
write much APL/J). If it's readable, then it's maintainable. The
cleanest language I've seen in the anti-syntax direction is Lisp. I
know several people who prefer to write signal processing software in
Lisp, and it all looks like a compiler-generated parse-tree to me.
I'll bet there is a correlation between level of mathematics training
and preference for "gratuitous syntax", and between computer-science
training and preference for a "minimalist" functional programming
style.
Julius
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- Re: octave to matlab conversion, (continued)
Re: octave to matlab conversion, Paul Kienzle, 2005/10/06
Re: octave to matlab conversion, Zdenek Hurak, 2005/10/07