Paren-free heads strawman

kdex kdex at kdex.de
Mon Feb 1 16:01:13 UTC 2016


Well, try and define "natural" in the context of constructed languages.
If this was a question of "naturalness" (whatever that may be), then really any deviation from what the language currently is, is "unnatural".
Anyway, we're here to discuss, not to blindly judge. :)

Note that the parens serve no purpose whatsoever.
They're actually just a relic dating back to Ken Thompson's re-interpretation of BCPL, B (1969), which in turn did this, because in FORTRAN,
`if x` and `ifx` looked the same to the parser; the parens were thus needed for the parser to differentiate between the two.

Since C derived from B, virtually any language that derived from it adapted to this redundant syntax; nowadays, the parens exist solely for decoration.

[Douglas Crockford](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlqv6NtBXcA) and [Brendan Eich](https://brendaneich.com/2010/11/paren-free/) seem
to be in favor of making them optional; that's why the strawman exists.

On Montag, 1. Februar 2016 15:47:52 CET Alican Çubukçuoğlu wrote:
> Isn't this very unnatural? If you are into this kind of thing, why don't
> you code Coffee for example? (Or don't since saving a few keystrokes isn't
> worth your dignity.)
> 
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