Re: OMG MOVE sucks!

On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 3:22 PM James H. H. Lampert
<jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Oh, for pity's sake. MOVE, MOVEL, EVAL, and the new EVALR *ALL* have
legitimate uses, and *all* of them, used improperly, cause trouble.

Of course any tool can cause trouble when used improperly. The thing
is, some tools are more prone to improper use.

And plenty of tools which *were* the best (or only) available have
since been supplanted by better ones.

A hopefully uncontroversial example is GOTO. Many of us started our
journey into computing in an environment which did not yet have
formal, structured looping constructs like FOR or WHILE. So we used IF
and GOTO. And if we used them perfectly, there was no problem. And
*since* perfect usage posed no problem, why did any language bother
growing formal looping constructs?

(I was surprised when introduced to the AS/400 and discovered that CL
didn't have formal loops. I was surprised again when IBM finally added
them to CL.)

As Jon said, there's a reason MOVE* is not even available in free-form.

John Y.