Free-form programming – intuitive?

I came across a discussion of freeform RPG and why the author felt it is the way to go rather than the fixed format , old-style. I would like to analyze it in some depth, not to make fun of the author, but rather because his views are representative of those who think the way he does, and they are stated very concisely. (This may take several posts, so bear with me.)

What is his reason number 4 for using RPG freeform?

Calculation syntax now looks more like the intuitive mathematical-function-like syntax found in most other modern programming languages. No doubt the Factor1-OpCode-Factor2-Result sequence has some magical storied history, but at this point it should be considered sand on a beach that’s been washed away by common sense and better practice. If I can write intuitive code in Java or C or Perl I should be able to do the same thing in RPG.”

We will ignore the condescending reference to magical storied history and sand on the beach for the moment. and concentrate on other things first.

1. Is freeform, whether in RPG or other languages, INTUITIVE?

Well, what is “intuitive”? According to the Webster’s On line Dictionary:”1 a: known or perceived by intuition : directly apprehended <had an intuitive awareness of his sister’s feelings> b: knowable by intuition <intuitive truths> c: based on or agreeing with intuition <intuitive responses> <makes intuitive sense> d: readily learned or understood <software with an intuitive interface> .

And what is intuition? “1: quick and ready insight 2 a: immediate apprehension or cognition b: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition c: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”

The most obvious applicable meaning is “readily learned and understood”. Certainly some of the languages he mentioned might be intuitive for some; but I thought RPG was readily learned; I learned it in just a few informal sessions by reading a textbook when I didn’t know a physical computer from a dustbin and had no concept of computer science and had never seen a computer language. I would be interested in seeing how many people learned C or Perl – or especially Java- by just being given a computer book for the first time and told, “read this”.

About 20 years ago, I bought a C compiler for my microcomputer and a C textbook. I wanted to see what it was all about, and I was willing to spend money to do so. But I got into it and started seeing things like int main(), all the different data types, and { and } and a= (b= (c=25)) and if (age ==40) – just for starters- I looked down from my RPG II heights and said “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

That last reference is especially intriguing. Nicklaus Wirth, creator of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon-2, wrote an interesting article about good and bad ideas in computer science. Here’s what he said on that subject:

“A notorious example for a bad idea was the choice of the equal sign to denote assignment. It goes back to Fortran in 1957 and has blindly been copied by armies of language designers. Why is it a bad idea? Because it overthrows a century old tradition to let “=” denote a comparison for equality, a predicate which is either true or false. But Fortran made it to mean assignment, the enforcing of equality. In this case, the operands are on unequal footing: The left operand (a variable) is to be made equal to the right operand (an expression). x = y does not mean the same thing as y = x. Algol corrected this mistake by the simple solution: Let assignment be denoted by “:=”.

“Perhaps this may appear as nitpicking to programmers who got used to the equal sign meaning assignment. But mixing up assignment and comparison is a truly bad idea, because it requires that another symbol be used for what traditionally was expressed by the equal sign. Comparison for equality became denoted by the two characters “==” (first in C). This is a consequence of the ugly kind, and it gave rise to similar bad ideas using “++”, “–“, “&&” etc. ”

So C came up with the bad idea c== 5; when you first come to it, being acquainted only with “=”, you look at “==” and your first thought is, “What on earth is that?” I place in that same category an expression like x+=1. You don’t know C; you know what a “+” is; you know what an “=” is; but what is a “+=”? I’m sorry folks, but that is not intuitive.

You think such stuff is intuitive not because it is truly intuitive; you think it because you have been raised to expect data in the format x=Y+3 in your “Introduction to Programming” or “Introduction to Computer Science” courses. You may have seen something like it in BASIC, and it fits the pattern. I was raised on X ADD 1 Y. I think THAT is intuitive.

Am I wrong? Is not X ADD 1 Y practically the same structure as 1 + 1 = 2, the mathematical structure you learned in first grade, a long time before your Computer Science courses? And, even if you allow the “bad idea” to be used, is not ADD 1 X easier to comprehend than X+=1? Which is REALLY more intuitive?

So the block-structured languages mentioned are not innately “intuitive”; whether they are more intuitive than fixed-format RPG depends entirely on where you are coming from. And whichever direction you come from, can you really say with a straight face that X+=1 would be more readily comprehensible than ADD 1 X for a new programmer?

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