Michael Kay wrote:

>Juan Gonzalez wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The inmmense popularity of C syntax
>>
>>function X {.....}
>>
>>or LISP one
>>
>>(function X .....)
>>
>>over Pascal like blocks
>>
>>begin function X ..... end function ....
>>    
>>
>
>I think the Pascal syntax is actually:
>
>FUNCTION convert( degC: real ): real
>BEGIN
>  convert := degC + 273.15;
>END;
>
>If you're seriously arguing that C has been more successful than Pascal
>*because* it used curly braces rather than BEGIN/END keywords then I think
>you need a course in logic. Pascal was designed so it could be typed on
>European keyboards that didn't have curly braces; C used curly braces
>because Americans didn't give a toss about that problem, or didn't even know
>it existed.
>  
>
wirth is (was?) european ;) on the other hand if you were typing on a 
ksr33 you too would want the absolute minimum keystrokes.

we have ascii and all it's problems because americans don't give a toss 
about other character sets. the smartest thing we did in australia 
(although we didn't know it at the time, so maybe it was just good luck) 
was to throw out the pound sign (currency pound that is) and use the 
dollar sign. now we can use US keyboards :) (and bombs, planes, etc - 
but that's less important to the economy than the keyboard).

cheers

rcik

>Michael Kay
>http://www.saxonica.com/
>
>
>!DSPAM:44eee7ba217101960693638!
>
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>