= for assignment and == for comparison. The main features or advantages of XML are given below. :) +1 though. Scala uses val and var do indicate a declaration of a final/mutable variable and the type is separated by a colon. Helps you in using or calling the function even though you do not know the whole implementation inside it. Don't reinvent the wheel and it won't roll over on you ;-). Is Cicely Tyson related to Whitney Houston? @electrons Believe me, you have missed nothing. C's syntax isn't nice. 1) It supports Unicode, allowing almost any information in any written human language to be communicated. Agile. Many new languages officially claim heritage from C, e.g. Helps you in using or calling the function even though you do not know the whole implementation inside it Block Structures: PL SQL consists of blocks of code, which can be nested within each other. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/163026/what-is-your-least-favorite-syntax-gotcha, Podcast 310: Fix-Server, and other useful command line utilities, I followed my dreams to get demoted to software developer, Opt-in alpha test for a new Stacks editor, Visual design changes to the review queues. 3. It's the only programming language I would never mention on my CV. rev 2021.2.8.38512, Stack Overflow works best with JavaScript enabled, Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers, Programming & related technical career opportunities, Recruit tech talent & build your employer brand, Reach developers & technologists worldwide. Advantages and Disadvantages of Sass Advantages. Repeating the expression can be quite cumbersome if you have complex expressions. Seeing this question reminded me of a section in Peter Matthews book 'Syntax' (1981) (it's meant to be a textbook, but it's more like a monograph really). The relative unpopularity of the Pascal language family seems to indicate keywords are not a good way of doing this. On most other things, Scala uses Java syntax. I think it's more a matter of popularity. I'd choose {} for blocks too. (Maybe there will be a comic about a programmer visiting Dennis Ritchie, too: "Please, don't make break s in switch statements optional!") For that matter, explicit typing often isn't necessary either. What's to stop the House majority party from voting to expel every member of the House minority party from committees? There aren't that many paired symbols on a "standard" American keyboard: {} [] () and <> are about it. It can also be used inside scripts written in other languages. The advantages of using jQuery are: 1. iii) A function may be used by many other programs. After all, one of C's design goals was to make the compiler easy to implement. Second, depending on your style, braces uses uses the exact same amount of screen space than keywords: You write them in a single line. But a good syntax can help to avoid errors. (As previously stated) It's much easier for programmers to learn a new language which "looks and feels like" the previous model. If we want to make life easy on the compiler, we want unique symbols for BEGIN and END, so using something like | or # for the block ends is out. C-style syntax is very compact. C++, C#, Objective-C. Why curly-braces, though? CSS empowers a web designer to make extensive changes to the web layout of all pages of a website through a single file. and ~) are syntactically too close although they mean different things. It was easier to use a preprocessor than defining a new language construct for constants. Also, anyone else love the bonkerness of Self? 1. Reduces network traffic This one is great advantages of PL/SQL. I was trying to stay as general as possible. Man, the more I learn about BCPL, the happier I am about not having learned it. And once the worst drawbacks have been removed, the benefit that most programmers know the rest of the syntax syntax far outweighs the advantages of redesigning a language from scratch. Why is a single semicolon a valid statement? ...well, yes. Are there any objective reasons that could explain the great spread and success of this syntax? It also helped that the majority of programmings were familiar with c AND the languages themselves were implemented in c. It's a case of why try to improve on something that already works very well. As I see it, there are really only three major syntax elements that have been carried from C out to the rest of the world: blocks denoted by curly-braces, semi-colons to denote ends of lines, and a general "terseness" of style. -1 popularity of a language is usually not based on superficial syntax. XML is widely used in the era of web development. Things like dots for members, type/scope qualifiers on the first appearance of a variable and parens for function arguments don't seem that common to you? Using something to denote the end of a line makes life much easier for the compiler. Short story: Buried sentient war machine reactivates and begins to dig out. IMHO, the only thing that makes C-style syntax popular is that most people know it. Advantages of Functions: i) The length of a source program can be reduced by using functions at appropriate places. Why don't brokers take money today for pending buy orders? And still, using C-style seems to make a more professional look. I did not say terseness overrides abstraction level. Originally, compilers could compile this more efficiently than i = i + 1. for(init;condition;step) loop; Although best practise is to use it to increment a variable only, no explicit syntax exists for this. And again, once you've trained the programming community what a "while loop" is, why change the name?). Partly I agree that braces are good: They are nearly invisible and indention is the dominant visual characteristic. Sure, you have 6 different levels of headings. When it was invented, every language was ugly as hell. Wrapping blocks in a single character makes reasonably good sense; first, it's fast to type, doesn't take up a lot of screen real-estate (unlike a BEGIN-END keyword pair). But other than that this is a really good summary. Personally, I'd prefer and and or, because symbols should just support syntax instead of being the main part. The second snippet has the advantage of not repeating the expression. For example: Your use of such words, THat is the same as "C is popular". Helps the compiler in performing the cross check of the function called used in code, as it checks if the syntax matches with used one or not. I think it is the 'function prototype' what you think of. Sass facilitates you to write clean, easy and less CSS in a programming construct. Block structured languages have to specify blocks somehow. And thus, using C-style for a new language makes it possible to apply old habbits (like naming conventions). With a new language, if you aren't going with keywords or indentation, why change it? The syntax of function (I hope that Function is related to function syntax): 1. These are good enough to get a reasonable looking document that shows the true structure of information. Anyway, probably C can't be seen separate from Unix, both as the requirements that shaped it, and the force without which it would have probably died in 1975. a nice solution because you have 4 possible combinations with different semantics: until/while after the do/loop keyword. Your target audience can already hit the curly-brace key with their pinkies, why make that particular skill worthless? This doesn't mean that you should spell identifiers differently than they have been declared (beware! In syntax, you just copy and paste and change or add variables names. I don't agree to arguments that state that these "don't use a lot of screen estate", are terser or are faster to write. Wishy-washy phrasing doesn't make a point any more valid. This is controversial. Deliberately or not, they may reproduce in their new language what they know best and what they judge most efficient. One of many vile things about it... Really? Why would mushroom like flora prefer to use a calcium carbonate skeleton instead of a chitin one? Suppose you did all your data editing and analyses from syntax (and saved it). Find home in hardcore Minecraft with reduced debug information? Now for the advantages of one over the other. Seen this way, python is the next step. Type and variable name just appear after each other, no marker that it is a local variable declaration. How do I ask people out in an online group? LISP's macro system is a testament to the utility of the minimal syntax. And, if you squint a little, having a semi-colon as your line terminator has a reasonably similar meaning as it does in English. Orthogonality. 6. Why we still need Short Term Memory if Long Term Memory can save temporary data? Case sensitiveness, although case insensitivity is more natural to humans (NOT to computers). (*) I'm hinting more on the absense of lots of compiler helpers. Does Matthew Gray Gubler do a voice in the Disney movie Tangled? Advantages of PL/SQL. "), or that adjectives generally come before the nouns they describe ("green chair"), subjects often come before verbs in non-question sentences ("She jogged"), prepositional … LISP is remarkable for its minimal syntax - it essentially only has a couple of grammatical constructs. Depending on situations this is a drawback or an advantage. Oh no! your coworkers to find and share information. I disagree in that I believe a good syntax to be crucial. Advantages of XML. This is what makes C++ hard to parse. it was a bit terser than other languages at the time ( use of {} rather than Algol's begin/end ), it had no obvious disadvantages ( eg Fortran had ambiguities and didn't support multiple statements on one line ), after it got popular, almost every other language designer knew C, and probably worked in C to build their language's toolset. Using parenthesis wasn't a that good choice as it can be used in the condition expression itself: Braces. Instead, this for construct is redundant as it (nearly) the same as. A trick I use is to run through the menus for one variable, paste the code, then … Is this due to entropy? Although I think, the syntax is the least concern for learning a new language. Advantages of SAP on Microsoft Azure with Syntax. Is Cicely Tyson related to Min Louis Farrakhan? Using only a single character makes life a lot easier for the programmer. ++ and -- operators; Makes some statements just a little bit shorter, but introduces side effects to expressions (a = b+++b++). If you're making a language that works basically the same way, why change anything? PL/SQL Blocks can be stored in the database and reused. Join Stack Overflow to learn, share knowledge, and build your career. Then there is the quirky choice of operators. Finally, your code can be munged up quite a bit by something like an email client and still be readable by both humans and a compiler (which is the only real problem I have with python-style indents-for-blocks). Never happened to you that you have to count your braces to find out where you have missed one? The fewer characters I can type to get the idea across to the computer while still being close enough to English to read, the better. Assignment operator returning a value; No distinction between statements (with effects) and expressions (which just return a value), EDIT: Some more examples here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/163026/what-is-your-least-favorite-syntax-gotcha. It is also used to simplify data storage and data sharing. Semicolons as statement terminator or separator. First, a language should be designed to be easy to read, not easy to write. This is a major goal of the Python language. Why do some PCB designers put pull-up resistors on pins where there is already an internal pull-up? it's probably easier to set up an editor to match "begin" to "end" than it is to match C's ("{" OR "? You certainly won't agree on many of these points, and not all of them are necessarily negative (semicolons, for instance), or that I knew a solution that is better for all cases. :) But point taken. What is the organelle which has a diameter of 20nm? But it's not "good". Getting peer review for research without submitting to conference or journal. This is the same reason why electrical engineers use the convention of electric charge as it is. Scale-up and/or scale-out configurations. It is light weight and it has a simple syntax. Is there a way to search all eBay sites for different countries at once? True be told why invent a completely new syntax when c is a concise and easily understood. ), but can lead to confusion. From working out why a certain syntax is used, to understanding the meaning behind how words are said, we can use the basic elements of linguistics with every conversation we have. Writing a shell script is faster and quicker. Or try typedef'ing an array type. ?<") to ("}" OR "? 10. syntax (syntax & phrases) 1. After a week (or a month or even a year) he calls you and complains that the results just can't be correct. Syntax is a Microsoft Gold partner for Cloud Platforms and Data Center competencies and a Silver partner for Cloud Productivity and Data Platform competencies. It does the job, and we're so used to it that it's probably here to stay. You also have tables to display tabular data, and tags for defining lists, etc. As for the basic terseness, I'd posit that was the only one you could say, objectively, was a good idea. JavaScript enhancement without the overhead of learning new syntax 2. Isn't that a lot of wasted space? In Chapter 4, p84-93, there's an explicit comparison and evaluation of dependency grammars vs. constituency grammars. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Let see the advantages of the bash shell as given below. Advantages of C Language. Did André Bloch or any other mathematician receive the Becquerel Prize? Even if I would, the resulting language would not be the perfect language. But most languages inherit that from C because "that's the syntax". It's the concept that enables people to know how to start a question with a question word ("What is that? They also had a significant memory problem, and the system (with its separate preprocessor-compiler-assembler-linker) was designed to minimize the state needed in memory at once, to maximize the size of programs that could be compiled for a given memory size. Or something else? Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow! Picking your way through the menus gets old fast. IOW more or less the contents of libgcc if you cut it down to K&R level. ?>"), and if typing speed is the limiting factor in your programming, you're probably not automating a task you should be ). The part of the grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of these structures and their formation is called “syntax”. The syntax and command are approx the same as those directly entered in command line so developer or programmer does not face much problem in implementation. Provides automatic encoding of HTML output. Pascal only 4yrs before was designed as algorithmic description language, and wouldn't leave the academia till 1980). It contains fewer codes so you can write CSS quicker. Or, to take that last sentence a step further, if you're trying to sell the programming community on your new, game-changing language (Java, C#, etc.) Are there certain advantages over the syntax of other languages? A preprocessor has its own syntax for developers to write easier and cleaner CSS code. First of all, we will look into some of the main advantages of use of Razor syntax. As for later languages adopting the syntax, that is more in the hope that it would make an upgrade path easier than superiority of syntax. This is the same reason why electrical engineers use the convention of electric charge as it is. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. @MarcovandeVoort C and Algol operate on much the same abstraction level, so it is possibly a minor advantage. Second, the syntax is fairly flexible, so you can format your blocks as you need/want to in special cases (which you can't really do in something like Python.) If you’re figuring out the best model and have to refine which predictors to include, running the same descriptive statistics on a bunch of variables, or defining the missing values for all 286 variable in the data set, you’re essentially running the same analysis over and over. The syntax in Python helps the programmers to do coding in fewer steps as compared to Java or C++. People are used to it. Dangerous conclusions out of thin air. Razor syntax code is more succinct. License notice for embedded device - include operating system and apt packages? Provides great readability of markup and code. Of our pairs, {} is really the only one that doesn't already mean something - () and [] both have a lot of math baggage (which gets translated more or less directly with functions and arrays) and both < and > mean all kinds of things. Henry S. Thompson wrote: > > Len writes: > > Henry S. Thompson wrote: > > > > > Anyway, without responding to the details of our exchange, you > > miss the point: Does XML-Data offer more functionality? Does Buddhism apply to this formula for Christianity? C++ is discovering that the return type might just fit better after the parameters (C++0x is allowing that syntax because it works better with other new features like decltype). At this point, I must mention LISP's syntax; if I don't, someone else surely will. I wonder why we bother with assembler then, when machine code is definitely more terse. The word ‘syntax’ refers to the systems of rules that combine multiple words into meaningful chunks of formulaic sequences, clauses, and sentences (Catts & Kamhi, 1999). Legions of programmers are used to using them to denote blocks, why invalidate all that muscle memory? I prefer braces over begin/end (although the braces are a pain on many non-english keyboards), but there are still a lot of quirks of C syntax that could be done better. Knowing a language includes the ability to construct phrases and sentences out of morphemes and words. ), maybe more than by any other syntactial style. The strict syntax and parsing requirements make the necessary parsing algorithms extremely simple, efficient, and consistent. Programming languages will always evolve and newly invented languages hopefully learn from its predecessors. It seems that VB.NET has a problem with the bad reputation of its predecessors. Having to only type one character for blocks is a minor advantage, but not a massive one (it's probably easier to set up an editor to match "begin" to "end" than it is to match C's ("{" OR "? This is clearly visible in something as C# which is quite far from C, except for the blocksyntax and name. And till this day, many modern and successful or even newly invented languages use this syntax - just think of Java, C++, C#, PHP, JavaScript, C, Perl etc. Additionally, people criticise LISP for its clutter of parentheses. You become smarter. Back then, C gained popularity for sucking less. By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. Afaik the popularity of C is directly linked to Unix' popularity, and not to its syntax. In the US, will the tower likely think my aircraft has been hijacked if I taxi with the flaps down? In this blog on the ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of Python,’ you will first learn about some of the significant advantages of Python programming language. Here are a few examples of companies that use these databases: There is a really big number of programming-languages that are heavily influenced by C-style syntax (curly-braced, semicola, etc. @Neil Butterworth: dang, really? The actual syntax is less important, although other languages might have advantages. I sometimes add a comment after the closing brace to indicate what is supposed to end here. Open Source Software. The actual syntax is less important, although other languages might have advantages. There are only so many good solutions to any given problem, and the more the problem is analysed the more alike the solutions to those problems are likely to become. What is the preferred syntax for defining enums in JavaScript? +1 Note that easy to implement is slightly off. Syntax is a set of rules that formally describe a programming language. (You could argue that most C-type languages also borrow most of the keyword vocabulary, but really, most of C's keywords came from older languages like ALGOL, FORTRAN, and BCPL, and really - they're all (mostly) common sense. This does not apply to C++, which is very difficult to implement, partly because it tries to stay compatible with C. EDIT: Another nice example: What is the worst gotcha in C# or .NET?. I think it is simply a matter of style rather than a matter of advantage. Well, having explicit block and statement delimiters allows multiple-statement expressions; for example, you can't do multi-statement lambda expressions in Python ( not that you have lambdas in C, though you do in the newest C++ ). So, it is easy for designers and developers to work more efficiently and quickly. Or a variable declaration? Explain the encapsulated anonymous function syntax, All possible array initialization syntaxes, Limitations of variable function name `##` syntax. I learned some BCPL, way back when, because it looked like an easy language to write a compiler for. I think VB's. There are multiple facets to that point; its lowlevel language(*) and thin mandatory library suitable for kernel development, the availability of compilers, the relative early attempts at cross-system compatibility. Why not just use "and" instead of &&? Some punctuation (and keywords for every declaration type) could have helped here, for instance, to clearly separate the return type. Implying in the context of the advantages and disadvantages of CSS talked about above, it is fair to establish that advantages of CSS dawn over the disadvantages of CSS.