NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE: C+-


C+-, pronounced "C More or Less", is a subject-oriented language (SOL). Each C+- class instance, known as a subject, holds hidden members, known as prejudices, agendas or undeclared preferences, which are impervious to outside messages; as well as public members, known as boasts or claims.

The following C operators are overridden as shown:

>
better than
<
worse than
>>
way better than
<<
forget it
!
not on your life
==
comparable, other things being equal
!==
get a life, guy!

C+- is strongly typed, based on stereotyping and self-righteous logic. The Boolean variables TRUE and FALSE (known as constants in other, less realistic languages) are supplemented with CREDIBLE and DUBIOUS, which are fuzzier than Zadeh's traditional fuzzy categories. All Booleans can be declared with the modifiers strong and weak. Weak implication is said to "preserve deniability" and was added at the request of the DoD to ensure compatibility with future versions of Ada. Well-formed falsehoods (WFFs) are assignment-compatible with all Booleans. What-if and why-not interactions are aided by the special conditional EVENIFNOT X THEN Y.

C+- supports information hiding and, among friend classes only, rumor sharing. Borrowing from the Eiffel lexicon, non-friend classes can be killed by arranging contracts. Note that friendships are intransitive, volatile and non-Abelian.

Operator precedence rules can be suspended with the directive #pragma dwim, known as the "Do what I mean" pragma.

ANSIfication will be firmly resisted. C+-'s slogan is "Be Your Own Standard."


May 2001
Author unknown.