From: David Carlton <carlton@...>
Date: 2007-05-21T08:35:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Parser or Programmer?

On Sun, 20 May 2007 09:43:00 +0200, Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com> said:
> On 19.05.2007 20:48, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

>> I don't like to make the reader or parser work any harder than
>> necessary just for the convenience of the coder.

> I would understand why you would want to make the reader's job easier
> - but the parser?  That's just a piece of software and I believe
> that we should always strive to make software easier to use for
> humans not machines.

In general, I agree.  But I don't want to ignore parsers completely -
the easier a language is to parse, the easier it is for people to
develop tools to work with the language, making programmers' lives
easier.  I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why there aren't many
C++ refactoring tools is because the language is incredibly difficult
to parse, for example.

David Carlton
carlton@bactrian.org