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syntactic salt
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syntactic salt /n./ The opposite of syntactic sugar, a
feature designed to make it harder to write bad code.
Specifically, syntactic salt is a hoop the programmer must jump
through just to prove that he knows what's going on, rather than to
express a program action. Some programmers consider required type
declarations to be syntactic salt. A requirement to write
`end if', `end while', `end do', etc. to terminate
the last block controlled by a control construct (as opposed to
just `end') would definitely be syntactic salt. Syntactic
salt is like the real thing in that it tends to raise hackers'
blood pressures in an unhealthy way. Compare candygrammar.
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