[Grace-core] grace

[James Noble]

On 25/03/2013, at 05:29 AM, APhilippe Kruchten wrote:

> I had a quick look.

Good!  Thanks!

> You are not bold enough, there. It is too much like the old ones. ;-)

well yes, in certain ways we are trying to make it look like other things
people use, to aid transitions for students (and teachers)

> And from a legibility perspective it is not as good as it may be. (Making sure that what you
> get is what you see, read...)

OK...

> There were some interesting lessons to draw form:
>   ABC  (Lambert Mertens and co.)
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_%28programming_language%29
>   Ada, modula
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%28programming_language%29
>  SETL
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETL
> 
> For some reasons, we seems to privilege what is easy to aprse by the computer over what is the less ambiguous for the  human reader (and writer)

Hm - well I have an idea about ABC, modula (& Ada), but less about SETL.
Which lessons did you have in mind? 

We're still keeping {} braces (although requiring consistent formatting)
because we think students need to learn to read programs with braces,
in Java & C & JavaScript...

> But maybe I say all this way too late...

No: one of the reasons I'm particularly keen to talk about Grace now 
is to solicit comments - I think we've now got something complete
enough to be worth critiquing...
> 
> Cheers,
> Philippe  (Who was involved in language design and compilerss and all that for a good 16 years.... my doctoral dissertation was on Ada
> (1982-1986))
> 
> ------------------------------------------------
> Philippe Kruchten
> Kruchten Engineering Services Ltd
> Vancouver, BC, Canada
> philippe at kruchten.com
> 
> 
> 
>