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From: mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1)
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Subject: Re: text in programming languages, Unicode in strings
Date: Sun, 19 May 2024 20:48:33 +0000
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John Levine wrote:

> According to Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>:
>>> That may have been the idea, but I think the idea was wrong. 
>>
>>I think few would disagree with both parts of that.  I certainly
>>wouldn't.  But I give the designers some slack as, in the late 1950s,
>>there was lettle knowledge about programming languages to go on.  Now,
>>the mistake is obvious.

> COBOL is older than Fortran, and back in the day there were plenty of
> people who were outraged at I=I+1 which is mathematically absurd for
> the
> physicicts and mathematicians who were Fortran's early users.  

> Algol gave us various kinds of := which were supposed to be better.

>>Yes, the COMPUTE statement.  i.e. COMPUTE I = I + 1 

> You could do that, but I think this is at least as clear:

>      ADD 1 TO PRODUCT-INDEX.

> Don't forget that while COBOL's control structures were quite weak,
> its data structures still look pretty good.  Everything in a C or C++
> structure comes from COBOL by way of PL/I.


Picture data structures ??