Re: [NOISE] Curly braces [was Re: Curl]

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <address@hidden>]

Vladimir G Ivanovic wrote:

> I'd like to second Dan's observation. Although I believe that Forth, ML,
> and Lisp/Scheme are "better" languages from a theoretical point of
> view,[1] I also believe that one of the reasons for Java's popularity is
> that it more closely matches the imperative way we actually behave: we
> perform actions on objects for their side effects, e.g. toasting a
> bagel. (Recall that one of Gosling's previous creations was NeWS, a
> PostScript-like display system, so he was no stranger to postfix
> notation.)

I think you're confusing two totally unrelated things: syntax and
semantics.  Postfix syntax has nothing to do with whether or not a
language supports imperative programming.  Furthermore, you can write
totally imperative programs in both Scheme and ML.  Granted, the
Scheme syntax is stupid and annoying, but ML's is not -- it's as free
of parentheses as Java's is.  The assignment operator is a simple
infix :=.

Shriram