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by lamacase 3176 days ago
What the author stated was:

> I will argue that block comments are unnecessary, and in fact near-impossible to design and implement correctly (for my own pedantic notion of correctness)

You might argue, subjectively or objectively, about the utility of the "notion of correctness" used here, but the author warns at the outset that this is the basis for the rest of the analysis.

I ask again, what preface would the author need to write to satisfy your criticism? I think that it's worthwhile for the author to point out that you cannot create a block comment scheme without having some un-intuitive edge cases, and I'm curious what gave you the impression that the author was claiming an unwarranted degree of objectivity.

1 comments

He argued that future programming languages should get rid of them completely.
Yes, but based on an subjective judgment. I am the author of the blog post, and I tried to do my utmost to emphasize that my judgment here is highly subjective, using phrases such as "for my own pedantic notion of correctness", and "I cannot in good faith claim that [problems with block comments] occur all that often in practice". I try to make it clear that I'm not surprised, offended, or annoyed that most languages support block comments.

How do you think I should have put my words, to make it clear that my opinion here is not intended as objective fact, but merely a subjective take on a language design question?

* Don't state that other people should change years of convention to meet "your pedantic notion of correctness".

* Center your blog post around "why I don't like block comments" and not "why block comments are bad".