On 12/04/2021 11:44, NY wrote:
"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
A good friend of mine is dyslexic. During his Ph.D. in CS, he wrote a
number of Algol programs. We moved from an ICL/Elliott 4130 to an ICL
2960.

It was programming that taught me to spell words like "procedure" :-)

All his programs failed to compile. More than one problem, but all the
same cause. For example, he had spelled UNTIL as UNTILL. He had
previously got away with it, because the 4130 compiler only checked the
first four characters of reserved words (24 bit machine, 6 bit upper
case
only internal code).

Must admit I don't think I have used a compiler that worked quite like
that...

(although I have used plenty that ignore more than a variable number
of significant characters on identifier names (like many CORAL 66
compilers that only read the first 12 characters), and that is whole
class of subtle bugs just waiting to happen!)

He was lucky that his dyslexia only made him mangle words. I could
imagine some people would also have problems getting the syntax and the
algebra correct, which would be harder to spot and to correct.

I wasted a day failing to Assemble my first (Z80) Assembler: I coped
examples straight out of the manual exactly as they appeared.
That was my mistake. An ArtStudent„¢ had been there before me and
carefully added an nice looking border of white space... once I removed
all the leading spaces at the start of every line, it worked....

--
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to
rule.
€“ H. L. Mencken, American journalist, 1880-1956