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Language Irritants #2

Every computer language has flaws.

One thing common in computer languages, especially interpreted or "scripting" languages that annoys me is conditional tests written AFTER the statement they refer to.

i.e (from Ruby) include Tracing if $DEBUG

It drives me nuts to read through code trying to comprehend it, looking for logical errors or simple mis-stated code for bugs, to read a statement but then have to backtrack my understanding of program flow because AFTER the statement is a condition affecting it.

It strikes me as plain silly and totally unneccessary. There's a reason RPN isn't the standard on calculators. It seems to defeat the purpose of interpreters/compilers to create a sort-of-kinda-like English language at a high level to work in and then deliberately screw up the parsing.